


The Final Case

by Musicangel913



Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24109855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musicangel913/pseuds/Musicangel913
Summary: Post-TEG. DEPRAC’s work to clean up the mess Marissa Fittes left behind is going well – so well, in fact, that Inspector Barnes announces it’s time for work to begin at some seriously high-profile sites. It’s Lockwood & Co.’s most challenging case yet, and if all goes well, it could be their last big outing. But one thing’s for sure: these aren’t your ordinary Visitors.
Relationships: Lucy Carlyle/Anthony Lockwood
Comments: 93
Kudos: 56





	1. Part One: Clock & Dagger

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone! This is my first attempt at a Lockwood & Co. fic, as well as my first story on Ao3! (Previously, I've only been on ff.net - this story is also posted there under the same username - but it seems like this particular fandom is a bit more active over here, so I thought I'd give it a go.) This is a 12-chapter work and is COMPLETE! I'll add a new chapter each week. I hope you enjoy! :)

‘Imposing’ was an excellent way to describe the house stood before us – the manor was huge, with two full wings extending off either side of the central structure, a lengthy drive ending in a wrought iron gate easily twice my height, and grounds stretching as far as the eye could see. An automobile so shiny I could see our reflections even from a distance sat smartly beside the house, and…dear lord, were those _fountains_ I could hear? ‘Excessive’ might’ve been a better word…

“All right, Luce?” a voice asked from my left. I turned to meet the gaze of Anthony Lockwood.

“Of course,” I assured him. “Just scoping things out.” I made a sweeping gesture towards the house’s enormous façade.

“It is rather impressive, isn’t it?” another voice chimed in from my right. George Cubbins’ gaze was fixed firmly upon the house as well, an expression of appreciative awe in his blue eyes. As he was our resident researcher and history buff, I could see why George was so fascinated with the building in front of us.

My name is Lucy Joan Carlyle. Lockwood, George, and I make up the heart of A.J. Lockwood & Co., a psychic investigations agency based in London. Simply put, we’re ghost hunters. Someone calls us about a troublesome spirit, and it’s our job to visit the site of the haunting, find the Source – the object tethering the ghost to our world – and contain it.

Though our other team members (official or otherwise) were valuable contributors, George felt that this particular case didn’t need all hands on deck – from what our client had said, it sounded like a typical Type Two, which, while plenty dangerous, we’d encountered in dozens of previous cases and were more than equipped to handle. As a result, it was just us three who’d traveled to the English countryside. It was just like old times, back when I’d first joined the agency, and I rather liked it.

“Ready then?” Lockwood asked. We’d reached the massive front doors, nearly half as tall again as any of us. Before George or I could answer (there was no need, really, as it had been more of a rhetorical question than anything), Lockwood raised his hand and rapped sharply upon the door.

Although we’d yet to meet our client (the case had begun with an over-the-phone consultation), we knew immediately that the woman who answered the door was the woman we’d come to see. She wore the same expression we’d seen on many previous clients: a mixture of fear, apprehension, and a little bit of hope, that last bit no doubt due to seeing someone who could perhaps help with her problem.

“Good afternoon,” Lockwood said pleasantly. “Mrs. MacMurtrie, is it? We represent Lockwood & Co. – we’re here about the psychic disturbances.”

“Yes, welcome!” the woman replied, that bit of hope noticeably increasing now that she knew who we were. “Please, do come in.” She stepped aside to allow us entry.

If the house’s exterior was impressive, the interior was ostentatious, bordering on gaudy. Priceless antiques dotted nearly every surface, the chandelier overhead and the mounted mirror to my left were some of the biggest I’d ever seen, and there was enough gold leaf (whether real or imitation, I didn’t know) to blind a person. It was a bit of a shame, really – based on what I knew of such things from George’s recent research, the house really did have the potential to be a truly elegant estate, but the decorator had gone so far over the top that it never stood a chance. I had to admit I was also a bit confused. Mrs. MacMurtrie wore expensive clothes, to be sure, but she was dressed rather stylishly – our fellow agent Holly Munro would’ve approved – so unless her taste in décor was drastically different from her taste in clothes, she didn’t seem to fit with the house at all.

“The kitchen is this way,” our host instructed. “I apologize for not bringing you to the sitting room, but…well, you’ll know in a minute.” Our ears pricked up at that. If. Mrs. MacMurtrie was avoiding the sitting room, it most likely played a central role in the manifestation.

The kitchen was large and modern, with plenty of seating around a central island. It was also already occupied – a tall man crisply dressed in a dark suit and tie leant against the far counter. He seemed to be roughly forty in age, and he surveyed us with a critical eye as we entered.

“Tea?” Mrs. MacMurtrie asked, already reaching for the kettle.

“Yes, thank you,” we answered. If there was anything Lockwood & Co. thrived on besides ghost hunting, it was tea.

“Tina, haven’t I already said this is a bit much?” the man asked.

“And haven’t I already said I’m going through with it anyway?” Mrs. MacMurtrie – Tina, we surmised – retorted.

“It’s highly unnecessary-”

“I _won’t_ have my children in this house again until the problem is gone!” Our host turned to us, her angry expression softening.

“My sincerest apologies,” she said. “This is my brother, Robert Danbury.”

“That’s _Lord_ Danbury to you, thank you.”

The countertop was high, which meant that _Lord_ Danbury missed the subtle but effective squeeze to my leg, courtesy of Lockwood, that stopped me from running the pretentious twit through with my rapier. It was obvious from his brief exchange with his sister that the man didn’t believe in ghosts – or, at the very least, was extremely skeptical – but honestly, he had a potentially dangerous Visitor in his house, and he was worried about a _title?_ Most people had stopped caring about those decades ago.

“Robert, enough,” Mrs. MacMurtrie said sharply. “You’ve made it quite clear what you think of my children’s story, but Georgie saved Nathaniel Miller’s life last month when she warned him of a ghost. If she said she saw something, she did.” Danbury harrumphed but didn’t speak further.

“Would you mind recounting your story once more, Mrs. MacMurtrie?” Lockwood asked politely. “We spoke on the phone, of course – goodness, but we haven’t introduced ourselves, have we? I’m Anthony Lockwood, head of Lockwood & Co., and these are my associates, George Cubbins and Lucy Carlyle. Anyway, it would be most helpful for us all to have the same information before we begin. You said something about your children?”

“Yes.” Mrs. MacMurtrie passed us teacups and set a tray laden with accoutrements within reach. We thanked her politely as she poured the hot water, and she began her tale.

“This house has been in our family for over a century,” she explained, “and we – myself, Robert, and our other siblings – have been hard at work restoring it since we inherited it from our late father some five years ago. In all that time, we’d never noticed anything amiss – of course, the restorations take place during daylight hours, but even then, I know that stronger spirits can sometimes stir up trouble long before nightfall. As the work is finally nearing completion, I decided to bring my children for an afternoon visit – it’s important that they know their family history. Robert and I were having tea in the sitting room when Georgie and Tom – my children, of course – came running into the room, practically hysterical. Once they’d calmed enough to speak, they explained that they’d seen something – a translucent figure – hovering near one of the upstairs bedrooms. They’d barely finished when Tom started screaming again – there was another, he said, in that very room.”

“What did your son say about the second apparition?” Lockwood inquired. Mrs. MacMurtrie shivered.

“His exact words were, ‘She’s ever so much clearer, and she’s got a bloody knife!’ I was about to scold him for his language when his sister clarified that he meant it literally. This… _vision_ was much clearer than the one they’d seen upstairs – so clear they thought she was a real person at first – and she carried a wicked-looking dagger, its edges slick with blood.”

“I still believe this is a waste of time, Tina,” Lord Danbury said disdainfully.

“And _I_ still believe that in this particular instance, I’m going to trust my children more than my skeptic of a brother!” Mrs. MacMurtrie snapped. “Adults can’t see spirits at all, we all know that, but just because _you_ didn’t have a shred of psychic ability as a child doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist! And given the history of this particular house, you’d think you’d be more inclined to believe me for once!”

Whoa. Tina MacMurtrie was clearly much stronger than she’d seemed when she’d first opened the door. I was liking her more by the minute. And from what she’d said about her children, it sounded like they each had a fair amount of psychic talent themselves – not that I was going to bring that up in this particular situation, of course.

Her brother, on the other hand, sickened me. Did he not realize how many children had _died_ protecting idiots like him from that very same fate? Given what we knew about his own case, did he not realize how lucky he’d been thus far? Contrary to what we’d originally thought, it sounded like we were dealing with more than one Visitor, at least one of which was highly dangerous. His petty jealousy was ridiculous.

“You mentioned the history of this house – have you heard of the Mad Mistress then, Mrs. MacMurtrie?” George asked then. Mrs. MacMurtrie looked thoughtful.

“I cannot say I recall the name – the only notable name attached to this estate is that of the Willoughbys, the original owners.”

“Then perhaps you’ve heard of her after all,” George replied. “The Mad Mistress’ real name was Lady Madeleine Willoughby. Her branch of the family lived here back in the early eighteenth century, and they were, by all accounts, quite influential. Ironically, she earned the moniker ‘the Mad Mistress’ over a mistress – when she discovered her husband was having an affair, she murdered both the husband and the mistress before killing herself, all in the same night. The authorities never found the murder weapon, but the official report spoke of slit throats and stab wounds.”

“Everything George said lines up with the children’s account,” Lockwood pointed out. “Your son and daughter saw an apparition carrying a dagger – Lady Madeleine herself, no doubt – and it sounds like our Visitor upstairs is one of her victims. It would stand to reason that the other is here as well, bringing our ghost total up to three.”

Three Visitors. This job was looking less straightforward by the minute…but as that was essentially our M.O., I wasn’t bothered. Lockwood, I knew from experience, would be bouncing around like an overexcited child as soon as the adults was gone, and George was practically drooling over the house’s history. Even I was looking forward to it – ghosts were dangerous, oh yes, but non-agents could hardly understand the thrill of the chase, and of course, I couldn’t resist the chance to test my Talent.

Kids good enough to become agents have at least one of three Talents: Sight, Listening, and Touch. I happen to be unusual in that I have _two_ exceptionally strong Talents, those being Listening and Touch. Through those Talents, I can hear glimpses of what happened in the past, which often gives me a better understanding of the scene, and of the ghost itself. In some instances, I can even communicate with the ghost, although as most ghosts can’t say more than a phrase or two, this is difficult. The only ghosts capable of full conversation are Type Threes, which are so rare that only one has ever been (officially) recorded. As it so happens, we know of a second Type Three, a spirit attached to a human skull we kept in a jar at Portland Row. George stole it when he left the Fittes agency, but it was only when the ghost spoke to me that we realized it could do much more than just pull faces. Many of the conversations we had weren’t repeatable, but it was definitely a learning experience all the same.

“This house is a historical treasure – I won’t have it damaged in any way,” Danbury suddenly said sternly. “At my sister’s insistence, I shall allow you to stay the night, but I know what you agents carry around. Flares, explosives – this house is full of priceless heirlooms, and I _won’t_ have them destroyed. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely,” Lockwood assured him, but we looked at one another. We didn’t exactly have the cleanest record when it came to damage, and how exactly did Danbury expect us to deal with these Visitors without _any_ lasting effects? What were we supposed to do if the Source was buried under the floor, or in a secret compartment requiring excavation? Was he really expecting us to fend off a vengeful Type Two with nothing but iron filings and lavender?

“Is there anything else we can do for you, any other information you need?” Mrs. MacMurtrie asked us.

“No, I don’t believe so,” Lockwood replied. “Between your testimony and George’s research, I think we’ve got enough to be going on. If you’d be so kind as to show us the specific rooms you mentioned, we’ll let you be on your way.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It hasn't quite been a week yet, but Wednesday's always been my usual update day, so here's chapter 2 a bit early. (Chapter 1 was also a bit tame; this one's a little more exciting.) Enjoy!

It wasn’t long before the adults had departed – Robert Danbury with much grumbling – and we were on our own. We hauled our heavy gear into the kitchen – always best to make base camp near the kettle – and set to organizing our supplies. Dusk was just approaching, so we had some time yet before things would really start happening.

“Lockwood,” I said, “no matter how well I know you, I don’t think I’ll ever understand how you always manage to keep your cool around fussy clients.”

“That Danbury is a piece of work, isn’t he?” Lockwood agreed. “Forbidding us from using our most essential tools.”

“Which, if you’ll remember, got us into a right bit of trouble in the Annabel Ward case,” George huffed. He stopped to check something in his kit and nodded, apparently satisfied.

“We weren’t banned from using them in that case, George,” I reminded him. “The only time a host specifically forbade us from using anything was Combe Carey Hall, and he was actively trying to kill us.”

“Details,” George muttered. “Anyway, even if we all agree that Danbury’s décor really could benefit from a spot of Greek fire, we’ll have to comply with his wishes and avoid using our flares.”

“Shall we start our readings, then?” Lockwood asked. “If the children’s account is correct, we shouldn’t have any problems finding our Visitors, at least, even if we don’t yet know the Source’s identity or location.”

“I would think the dagger would be a probable Source, don’t you?” I said. Lockwood shrugged.

“It’s certainly a good guess, but there’s something that’s still not adding up,” he replied. “George, how did Lady Madeleine kill herself? You said the report mentioned stab wounds, but the dagger wasn’t found.”

“No,” George agreed, “it wasn’t. And if she’d stabbed herself, the dagger would’ve been close by, wouldn’t you think? But the report specifically stated that the murder weapon was never found – instead, there was a small cup beside Lady Madeleine’s body, which leads me to believe that she poisoned herself. The blood on her clothes was enough to convict her of the crime, but as to why she hid the dagger, I can’t say.”

“It does seem odd,” I said. “After all, she killed herself as well, so it’s not like she would’ve gone to prison or anything like that. Family heirloom? Her way of sticking it to the investigators? Who knows?”

“Never underestimate the power of a woman scorned,” George said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded.

“Lucy, all’s you’ve got to do is take a look at history to realize that. And besides, don’t think I don’t know how you react when Lockwood’s nicked the last of your favorite tea – you’re bloody terrifying.”

_“You’re_ the one who stole that last teabag?” I asked, rounding on Lockwood. “You told me it was George!”

“The point is,” Lockwood said quickly, deliberately ignoring my accusation, “we should keep an eye out for the dagger – it might not be _the_ Source, but it would definitely tie all three Visitors to this place. Now, let’s get to those readings.” I was still annoyed about the tea – he had his own teabags, dammit! – but I gathered up my supplies and followed. I could always nick something of his later – right now, we had a job to do.

Like any good agent should, we started our readings in our current location, even though we knew we wouldn’t find much of anything there – in our line of work, being sloppy could mean the difference between life and death. As we expected, the temperature was normal, and none of us could sense anything out of the ordinary. The grand foyer, too, was devoid of anything noteworthy, although it was slightly colder just outside the door we now knew led to the sitting room. Lockwood cracked open the door and we stepped inside.

“Whoa,” Lockwood muttered. He pulled a pair of sunglasses from his coat pocket and slipped them on, though it was nearly dark.

“Death glow?” I asked, more for confirmation than anything. Death glows were patches of light illuminating the spot of a death, and as Lockwood’s Sight was far superior to George’s or mine – or any agent’s I knew, for that matter – it wasn’t surprising that he’d spotted this one first. Given how quickly he’d reached for the sunglasses, I guessed this particular glow was exceptionally bright.

“Just there, by the fireplace,” he nodded. The massive stone structure dominated the far wall, a family portrait hanging above. “Mrs. MacMurtrie’s children saw the woman with the dagger in here, so this must be where Lady Madeleine killed herself, and judging by the brightness of the death glow, I’d say she’s an exceptionally strong Type Two for sure.”

I surveyed the rest of the room while listening to Lockwood’s testimony. It was far more subdued than the grand foyer, almost classy by comparison, although the pattern on the upholstery still looked like the wrong end of one of George’s experiments. A beautiful old grandfather clock stood in one corner next to an ornately carved secretary, and bookshelves crammed with leather-bound tomes and various knickknacks lined the walls. Velvet drapes framed the floor-to-ceiling windows, and our feet sank into the plush rug covering the flagstone floor.

“Noticeable temperature drop here as well,” George announced. “I’d rather not get too much closer to the death glow if it’s as powerful as you say, Lockwood, but we know it’ll only get colder towards that end of the room.”

“Can you hear anything, Luce?” Lockwood asked. I closed my eyes and concentrated. After a moment, I did get something. I strained my ears to listen further.

“There is something – ‘til the end’, I think. There’s a bit more, but I can’t make it out, it’s all static.”

“That fits with our Visitor’s identity, then,” George said. “After all, the murder victims wouldn’t have known it was their ‘end’, would they? Perhaps Lady Madeleine plotted their deaths in here as well.”

The more dreaded feelings associated with a haunting – miasma, malaise, creeping fear – were also bound to get stronger as the evening increased. Knowing we’d have to come back to the sitting room at some point, we left to finish up our readings in the rest of the house.

Roughly half an hour later found us back in the kitchen, drinking tea and munching on biscuits as we examined our data. The second bedroom on the landing had been almost as cold as the sitting room, with two death glows instead of one. It seems Lockwood had been right – Lady Madeleine’s victims were both still tethered to the house as well. We hadn’t unearthed anything else of note, and so we agreed to concentrate our efforts on those two locations.

“I hate to say it, but I think we’re going to have to split up,” Lockwood said as he reached for another biscuit.

“Like that ever ends well,” George snorted.

“It doesn’t, but what else can we do? We have no idea when the manifestations will happen, nor how long they’ll last. If all three of us focus on one room, we’ll likely miss something important.” Just the smallest detail could lead us to the Source, and if we missed it, we might not get a second chance.

“I’ll take the sitting room,” I volunteered. “I didn’t Hear much of anything upstairs, but I did get that little snippet from Lady Madeleine, and I bet it’ll get clearer as the night goes on.”

“Then I should take the upstairs, and Lockwood, you should float,” George said. “You’re much faster than I am, so you’ll be able to help either of us quickly if we need it.” That settled, we checked our belts one last time and prepared to go our separate ways.

“We’ll check in after two hours,” Lockwood said with a glance at his watch. “Although it’s late enough we could very well see something significant before then. Anyway, we’d best get in place – give a shout if you need anything.” We’d set up iron chain circles throughout the house and propped open the doors to the affected rooms, so in theory, we were all within easy reach of one another. I waved goodbye to the boys and headed for the sitting room. My iron circle was halfway between the door and the fireplace, offering me a clear view of the entire room without being too close to the place where Lady Madeleine’s ghost had appeared. Zipping my thick coat against the chill, I settled myself cross-legged in the circle, my rapier in my lap, and retrieved a piece of chewing gum from my bag. I popped the minty strip into my mouth and waited.

The time between setup and the actual manifestation is always the worst. With nothing else to do, it’s far too easy to let your mind wander, leaving you far more vulnerable than you’d normally be. Malaise and miasma tend to sneak in during this time, although thankfully, I’d yet to feel anything. Aside from the occasional crack of my gum or a stray gust of wind outside, all was quiet. I was a bit bored, though, and so I decided to see if I could Hear anything beyond what I had earlier. I set my rapier down and stepped out of the iron circle, crouching to the floor just outside the chains – any iron or silver on my person seriously impeded my ability, but several far-too-close calls on previous cases had taught me to keep my safe zone within easy reach. After another glance around the room to confirm I hadn’t missed anything, I carefully pressed my palm to the floor.

Having done so as many times as I had, the sensations of Touch weren’t nearly as surprising as they used to be, but I still never knew what to expect in terms of the details. Sometimes the scene came on so strongly that I nearly fell over, while in other cases, the traces were so faint I could barely make anything out. Here, it was somewhere in between – the scene came to me gradually, but it was still clear enough for me to hear with relative ease. A snapping, crackling sound came first – it took me but a moment to identify it as the sound of a fire – followed by the _tick, tick, tick_ of a clock, and the soft swish of what sounded like fabric. There were several voices, although I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and the tinkling of laughter. It sounded like a party – had Lady Madeleine and her husband had other guests that evening? The clock chimed, a deep, almost melancholy sound, although there was also something inherently grand about it, and I thought I heard a hint of music playing. The scene continued for several long moments before gradually fading away until only the sounds of the fire remained.

And then there was the voice, barely more than a whisper:

_“Tick, tock, tick, tock, a countdown ‘til the end…tick, tock, tick, tock, a countdown ‘til the end…”_

The voice – a feminine one, light and breathy – continued to repeat the phrase in a singsong manner, her words accompanied by a faint tapping sound that I couldn’t identify. It never varied in volume, but it was so chilling that I had to remove my hand. I remained in my crouched position, staring at the floor and considering what I’d just heard. We hadn’t discussed the full details during our case briefing, but if I had to guess, I thought that perhaps the Willoughbys had hosted a party that fateful evening – George had mentioned that they’d been quite influential socially, so it was definitely possible. Had Lord Willoughby’s mistress been someone in their inner circle, perhaps? Had she been at the party as well, laughing along with her hostess, never suspecting that she’d been found out, that she’d never leave the house alive? I shivered, my breath pluming in front of my face.

And then it occurred to me that I’d been still for far too long.

Slowly, I lifted my head and nearly choked on a gasp – I was no longer alone in the room. A woman stood before the fireplace. She wore a magnificent evening gown of pale blue silk, the skirts swishing lightly over the floor as she slowly paced back and forth. Her hair, a rich, deep auburn color, was arranged in a lavish cascade of curls, precious jewels glittered on her fingers, and a black silk choker encircled her throat. She was unquestionably beautiful, but it wasn’t her looks that had me transfixed. As she turned to continue her pacing, she revealed the knife she held in her left hand – nearly as long as my forearm with an elaborately carved white handle, the blade wickedly sharp and stained dark red with blood. Splatters of blood marred the front of her dress as well, the lovely frock suddenly not so lovely.

_“Tick, tock, tick, tock, a countdown ‘til the end…”_

The ghost of Lady Madeleine hadn’t noticed me, but it didn’t matter. Ghost-lock had set in, and I couldn’t move for fear.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Lady Madeleine’s perfectly manicured nails clicked against the blade, the previously unknown sound explained.

But what did it matter? Why did I care? There wasn’t a point. My limbs felt like lead, and I couldn’t remember why I’d thought I could do this. I was helpless, alone, and useless – it was only a matter of time before I too succumbed to the ghost.

_“Lucy…”_

Was that the mistress’ name too, or was I in even more trouble than I’d originally thought? If the ghost knew my name, I might as well already be dead…

_“Tick, tock, tick, tock, a countdown ‘til the end…”_

Lady Madeleine had already killed her husband and his lover – it seemed she was now counting down to her own end as well. Mine couldn’t be too far behind…

_“Lucy…”_

My name sounded farther away, like an echo, but I couldn’t place why, nor did I care…

_“Tick, tock, tick, tock, a countdown ‘til the end…”_

“LUCY! DAMMIT, LUCE, SNAP OUT OF IT!”

Only one person ever called me ‘Luce.’ The ghost-lock lifted and my head snapped up just in time to see a dark shape come hurtling across the room and tackle me to the ground.

“Oof!” I landed hard on my back in the chain circle, pinned by my rescuer’s form with my face inches from my rapier. “Is that your way of telling me I need a nose job?” Lockwood – I didn’t need to be able to see to know it was him – snorted.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Your nose is lovely just the way it is, thank you.” He paused a moment. “Are you alright?”

“I’d be better if I didn’t have your knee digging into my stomach,” I said dryly. He quickly scrambled off me and helped me sit up.

“As sorry as I am for flattening you, that’s not what I meant when I asked if you were alright,” he continued. “What happened?”

“I used my Touch and got a _very_ clear idea of what happened here that night,” I told him. “By the time the scene ended, _she’d_ shown up.” I nodded to the ghost of Lady Madeleine, which was no longer idly pacing, but rather circling our iron barrier. Her pretty features were contorted in a truly ugly expression, and she clenched the bloody dagger tightly, her knuckles white.

_“Tick, tock, tick, tock, a countdown ‘til the end…”_ Her voice had gotten a little louder now, and more urgent.

“As much as I’d love to tell you the whole story, could we please deal with that first?” I asked.

“How?” Lockwood and I crouched beside one another, all but pressed together in the small space, and contemplated the angry spirit. He had a point – now that she’d focused her attention on us, our options had narrowed considerably. Salt bombs wouldn’t do much against a Type Two of her strength, and of course we were forbidden from using our stronger flares.

“Did George have any luck?” I asked next, wondering if maybe he’d uncovered something useful.

“Not really,” Lockwood replied. “The husband and the mistress appeared, all right – death by knife wounds, just as we’d expected – but they’re both benign. The husband pointed to the floor in the general direction of this room, suggesting that he, at least, knew who’d killed them, so George suggested I should come check on you. I called your name as I was coming down the stairs – when you didn’t answer, I knew something was wrong.”

“And now here we are,” I murmured. Damn – I was hoping he’d have some tidbit of information that would help, but we were still stuck at square one.

_“Tick, tock, twelve o’clock, a countdown ‘til the end…”_ Lady Madeleine’s volume had increased yet again, and she seemed truly angry that she couldn’t reach us. Or perhaps she could – she was certainly powerful enough to figure out a way to break through the chains. I shivered again – that was _not_ something I wanted to consider.

“We need to figure out what the Source is,” Lockwood said. “If only we knew where she stashed that dagger!”

“Even if we did, we’d still have to hold her off long enough to find it!” I retorted, trying and failing to keep my voice calm. The ghost was getting louder still – and was it my imagination, or had she gotten _closer_ as well? I tried to suppress the shiver that raced up my spine.

_“Tick, tock, twelve o’clock, a countdown ‘til the end…”_

“Well, we’ve got to do _something…”_

_“TICK, TOCK, TWELVE O’CLOCK, A COUNTDOWN ‘TIL THE END…”_

Hang on…that wasn’t what she’d been saying before, was it?

All of a sudden, it came to me. Blocking out the ghost’s screams, I squinted across the room and gasped.

“Lockwood!” I shouted over Lady Madeleine. “I know what the Source is!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there's chapter 2! We'll wrap this case up in chapter 3, plus see the return of a fan favorite...until next time!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The conclusion of the Lady Madeleine case, and the return of a...friend ;)

Lockwood looked at me.

“What?”

“The Source!” I cried. “I know what it is! I’m going to need a distraction!” Lockwood grinned, his teeth gleaming nearly as bright as the ghost.

“That, I can do!” he said. “On three?”

“On three. One…two…THREE!” Rapiers drawn, we leapt from the circle, Lockwood turning to face Lady Madeleine while I bolted across the room. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t figured it out sooner. I’d been so fixated on Lady Madeleine that I hadn’t noticed what I was hearing – or rather, _not_ hearing.

Save for my glimpse into the past, the grandfather clock in the corner hadn’t made a sound all night.

The room was so dark that the furniture was reduced to mere shapes, but that didn’t stop me from vaulting over the nearest armchair with all the skill of a gymnast. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten about the coffee table behind it, and I swore loudly as I crashed into it and my shins painfully impacted the hard wood.

“Faster would be better, Luce!” Lockwood shouted from behind me. A quick glance told me that he was doing his best to fend off the ghost, his rapier a blur as he wove complex ward knots, but even he wouldn’t last long against a spirit that powerful. Ignoring the stabbing pain in my shins, I moved as quickly as I could over to the corner where the clock stood.

“LUCY, BEHIND YOU!”

I jumped to the side just in time. Lady Madeleine had evidently noticed my aim and decided that I was far more of a threat than Lockwood, as she was suddenly just inches away from where I stood, her face contorted with rage. Lockwood himself had dived to the floor to avoid being ghost-touched, and he was now madly scrambling to his feet.

 _“TICK, TOCK, TWELVE O’CLOCK, A COUNTDOWN ‘TIL THE END!”_ Lady Madeleine was so angry that her words were almost unintelligible.

“YES, YOU KILLED YOURSELF AT MIDNIGHT, DIDN’T YOU!” I snapped. “AREN’T YOU JUST SO ORIGINAL!”

“How about let’s save the sass for something that isn’t trying to kill you!” a new voice shouted.

“About damn time you showed up!” I yelled to George. I slashed and parried as Lady Madeleine continued to screech, my wards only just holding her back. “A little help here?” George drew his rapier, and he and Lockwood set to work. Though the ghost was now otherwise occupied, I still kept my own rapier firmly pointed in her direction as I inched closer to the clock.

After what seemed like hours, I finally reached my destination. The clock was quite tall, so I grabbed the desk chair and clambered up onto it. At the same time, I reached into my belt for the silver net I knew was there. Snapping it open with a flick of my wrist, I wasted no time in tossing the net over the top of the clock.

Silence. Then…

“Well done, Luce.” I turned to the boys, two shadows in the dark now that Lady Madeleine’s ghost had vanished. It wasn’t strictly necessary to _stay_ in the dark, so I pulled my torch from my belt and flicked it on, careful to keep the beam low so I wouldn’t accidentally blind anyone.

“I think this clock is more than meets the eye,” I said quietly. “Hold the torch for me, Lockwood?” He took the device from me, leaving my hands free.

“Shine it just there,” I instructed, pointing to the top of the clock. Lockwood did so, and I found what I was looking for. Carefully, so as not to damage the clock, I slid the bonnet forward.

“Make sure the Seal stays put,” George warned. I didn’t disagree – I wasn’t about to give Lady Madeleine any opportunity to return.

It took quite a bit longer than it normally would have to remove the bonnet, given our extra caution, but finally, the piece came off, and George placed it on the floor for safekeeping.

“Torch,” I murmured. Lockwood handed my torch back, and I shone the beam behind the clock face. Jammed between the gears, I could just make out a very familiar elaborately carved handle.

“Bingo,” I said. “The lost dagger is lost no more. Now, shall we talk this over in the kitchen? I don’t fancy hanging around in here any longer than I have to.”

Though we were exhausted, none of us wanted to attempt sleep with such a precariously contained Source close by, so we settled for brewing extra-strong tea and sitting down to debrief.

“How did you know where the dagger was?” George asked. A bit of tea sloshed from his cup and stained the front of his shirt; he either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“I didn’t,” I replied after a sip of my own tea. “Not until Lady Madeleine gave me the idea, anyway. She’d been muttering the entire time since she’d appeared – ‘tick, tock, tick, tock, a countdown ‘til the end’ were her exact words – but when she got angry, she changed it a little, to ‘tick, tock, twelve o’clock’. It took me a few times to notice – we were a bit preoccupied by that point – but once I did, I realized I’d never once actually heard the clock, even though I’d been in there for ages. Sure enough, when I got a look at it, I saw it was frozen at twelve o’clock.”

“The exact time our ghost friend had said,” Lockwood chimed in. I nodded.

“Exactly. And given how fixated she was with the time, I highly doubted it had just stopped ticking by coincidence. I think she thought herself clever and decided to stop the clock on purpose, which then got me thinking that perhaps she’d killed two birds with one stone, so to speak, and jammed the gears with the dagger itself.”

“The clock was definitely her Source, then,” Lockwood said. “It made the perfect hiding place for the murder weapon, _and_ it represented her control over the entire situation. The dagger’s presence only amplified its power as a Source, since that tied her victims here as well.”

“She also probably knew that the authorities weren’t likely to notice a silent clock,” George finished. “They would’ve been dealing with three corpses, for one thing, and for another, depending how much time elapsed between the deaths and someone finding the bodies, the clock could’ve easily stopped on its own.”

“Because you have to wind them regularly,” I said, thinking of the highly similar clock we had back home at Portland Row. Its soft ticking had soothed me to sleep many times after nightmares had driven me down from my attic bedroom.

“Precisely. Why nobody’s noticed it since then is another matter, but that can wait ‘til our hosts come back. I’m absolutely knackered, so let’s call it a night for now.”

We took turns dozing on and off until our clients returned later that morning. The clock, as it transpired, had been in storage for some time, explaining the lack of inquiry surrounding its silence. Danbury wasn’t at all pleased when we told him it had to go – it was, after all, a valuable antique – but when we showed him the dagger lodged inside, his skepticism vanished and he suddenly saw sense. Funny, that. Mrs. MacMurtrie, on the other hand, thanked us profusely, paid us handsomely, and even saw to our return travel arrangements, though we insisted this last bit wasn’t necessary.

Given the manor’s more remote location, it was nearing lunchtime by the time we finally stumbled up the front steps of number 35, Portland Row. Lockwood fumbled with his keys – even he doesn’t hold up well on no sleep – and we hauled our bags over the threshold, dumping them in an untidy heap in the front hall.

 _“You’re back in one piece,”_ a familiar voice said. It sounded almost disappointed.

“Hello, Skull,” I replied tiredly. A glance into the sitting room revealed the form of a tall, lanky youth reclining in an armchair, his bare feet crossed on the accompanying ottoman. He wore a plain white shirt, and dark trousers slightly too short for his long legs. Only his monochromatic coloring betrayed that he was not, in fact, alive – this boy was the Type Three spirit associated with the skull upstairs in my bedroom. We’d thought he was gone for good when he saved our lives at Fittes House, badly damaging his skull – his Source – in the process, but he’d proved us wrong and occasionally turned up. Being out of the silver-glass jar hadn’t changed him much – he was still rude, sarcastic, and quick to laugh at our mistakes or suggest gruesome deaths for us when particularly put out. Everyone could see him now – which was, admittedly, quite useful, since we were pretty sure that ghost-touch from a Type Three would mean instant death – but I was still the only one who could hear him. The biggest downside there, of course, was that I couldn’t simply flip the jar’s lever anymore when I didn’t want to put up with him…

“Yes, we’re all back. Sorry for not dying.”

 _“You’re no fun,”_ Skull said with a pout. He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded us shrewdly. _“Your hair’s a mess, Carlyle – tell me, where were you canoodling this time? A broom cupboard? Oh, wait – you were in a fancy manor house. On a chaise longue, perhaps?”_ He winked suggestively.

“For the last time, there’s no canoodling on cases!” I snapped, my face bright red. My friends might not be able to hear Skull, but they can certainly hear my replies. Since I usually don’t think about my responses to Skull any more than my responses to anyone else, this is, more often than not, bloody _embarrassing_ , especially with Skull’s tendency to rag on me about my relationship with Lockwood.

“What’s this about canoodling?” Lockwood poked his head into the room, sounding far more interested than I wanted, given the situation.

 _“Uh huh. If you’re going to lie, at least learn to do it properly. I believe that as much as I believe that rubbish about the time you and Lockwood went out ‘on a case’ and came back looking even more disheveled than you currently do,”_ Skull said.

“Oh, shut _up,_ both of you!” I said. My face was absolutely _burning._ “I’m too tired to put up with this shite!”

 _“Language!”_ Skull gasped in mock horror.

“Like you don’t say stuff like that all the time,” I retorted. “I want food, and I want sleep.”

“You’re in luck, then,” came George’s voice from the hall. “Holly’s here, and she made sandwiches.” He joined Lockwood and me in the sitting room, followed by Holly Munro, our fellow agent. She wore an apron over her clothes and carried a tray piled high with food.

“Hol, you’re a _goddess,”_ I breathed, selecting a sandwich and taking a big bite. Making sandwiches wasn’t hard, of course, but the mere idea of doing it myself in my current state seemed a gargantuan task. Holly chuckled.

“No problem,” she said. “I had to stop by anyway to go over some notes for my upcoming case, and I figured you’d be hungry when you got home.” She then groaned. “George, the food hasn’t even been out two minutes, and you’ve already got mustard all down your front!”

 _“Pretty sure that’s at least his second sandwich as well, the way he’s eating,”_ Skull snorted. He pulled a face. _“Or maybe ‘inhaling’ is a better word…did Cubbins even bother to_ chew _that? Ugh!”_ I shot him a Look, the one usually paired with my best ‘I’m-going-to-figure-out-how-to-put-you-back-in-that-jar’ threat. George blotted the mess with a napkin, which didn’t do much except spread the stain further.

“Did I hear you say something about _canoodling_ , Lucy?” he asked then.

“Oh, for God’s sake, we fell asleep in the back of the damn cab!”

 _“Sure, you did,”_ Skull muttered. I threw my hands up and made a noise of disgust.

“I give up. I’m going to bed.”

 _“Are you sure you don’t want company?”_ Skull asked, waggling his eyebrows. His gaze shifted to Lockwood. _“I’m sure lover boy here would love to-”_

Instead of finishing the last bite of my sandwich, I chucked it straight at his head. As he was a ghost, I knew it couldn’t hit him, but it was still extremely satisfying to watch that little bit of ham and cheese go right through his nose.

“Good _night!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Lucy's conversations with Skull is my favorite, hahahaha. Hope you enjoyed! :)


	4. Part Two: The Gala

There’s nothing quite like coming home after a long night on the job. When you’re dead on your feet (no pun intended) after an exhausting battle with a vengeful spirit, fingertips stained with magnesium and salt in your hair, the familiarity of a hot shower and a warm bed is the best thing in the world. Unpacking your bags, restocking your supplies, doing the dishes you’ve neglected for three days…that can all wait. You’re back where you belong, and for just a little while, all is right with the world.

Number 35, Portland Row has changed quite a bit since I first joined Lockwood & Co. Oh, sure, the basic structure of the house is the same, the basement still smells like straw, chalk, and silver polish, and I don’t think the kitchen will ever be fully clean, no matter how hard Holly tries. But the changes aren’t those a casual visitor would notice – for instance, we’ve had to replace the back door at least twice, and the walls have loads of oddly shaped fade marks on them where Lockwood’s parents’ ghost-hunting relics used to hang. Thanks to our surge in popularity after the Fittes debacle, we’d had enough extra cash to splurge on professional help to fix things like the leaky bathroom showerhead and to replace the antique radiator in my attic bedroom.

We hadn’t had a guest bedroom when I moved in, either – that room had belonged to Jessica, Lockwood’s sister, who’d died from ghost-touch when he was still a child. Lockwood had kept the room shut up tight and heavily warded for years, his sister’s death glow hovering over the pristine white bed like some eerily beautiful orb. In our battle against the Winkmans and Sir Rupert Gale, that death glow, along with nearly every relic we could find in the house, provided the psychic energy we needed to create a portal to the Other Side and escape. With Jessica well and truly gone, Lockwood had finally decided it was time for him to move on as well, and we’d begun the renovations. I could only guess at the courage he’d needed to make that choice – though Lockwood still didn’t talk much about his family, what little he’d revealed showed that they’d been very close – and I admired him all the more for it. I still often felt guilt about the Wytheburn Mill incident, and those victims had been agents I hardly knew. The room usually sat empty, but occasionally our team members who didn’t already live at Portland Row would crash there after a particularly hard night.

Our personnel has changed a bit as well. What once was a trio has (basically) doubled in size, although we’re rarely all present on all cases, and it’s still just Lockwood, George, and myself actually living at Portland Row.

Holly Munro was the first to join our team after me. A former Rotwell agent, she originally came to us as an assistant of sorts – at the time, we had more cases than we could handle, and it was starting to show in our slovenly living conditions and lack of time for more than just a few hours’ sleep a night. I’ll admit it – at first, I _hated_ Holly. I hated her pristine appearance, her near-obsessive need to clean everything, and the way the boys fawned all over her. Petty jealousy? Absolutely…but I couldn’t help it. I’ve always been insecure about myself, and suddenly, this _perfect_ girl had swooped in and could do no wrong. While I was trying to work out if my feelings for Lockwood were more than just a crush, he was constantly prattling on about how amazing our new teammate was. I might be one of the most talented agents in London, but in many ways, I’m still just a teenage girl.

Looking back, I’m a bit ashamed of how horrible I was to Holly at first. I’d been put off her from the start – Lockwood and George had hired her without consulting me – and thanks to my stubborn streak, I’d never really given her a chance. I’d just focused on everything I disliked about her and left it at that. I felt even worse about the whole thing when I finally figured out what Holly meant about it not being Lockwood she’d wanted to impress, and that, regardless of what she felt towards me, she’d genuinely missed my company during my brief stint as a freelancer. We’ve been through a lot since then – solving cases, saving each other’s lives, a trip to the Other Side – and our relationship has improved quite a bit, but it will take time to fully overcome our initial rocky start.

Quill Kipps isn’t really a member of our team, but he isn’t _not_ a member, either. For the longest time, Kipps worked for the Fittes Agency, he and his team the bane of Lockwood’s existence. The two of them were always at each other’s throats – Kipps loved to goad Lockwood about us not being a ‘proper’ agency, and Lockwood in turn taunted Kipps about an old fencing competition. We all nearly died when our teams were forced to pair up on the Bickerstaff case, and the Aickmere Brothers incident was just as bad.

All that changed, however, when Kipps lost his Talent. Even the best agents among us eventually lose our psychic abilities, and Kipps, being the oldest of any of us, hit that mark first. Initially demoted to supervisor status, he lost his job completely soon after (all for the best, really, given all the corruption within Fittes). Kipps thought his psychic days were done until George, on a hunch, presented him with a pair of goggles he’d nicked from Fairfax after the Combe Carey Hall case. The goggles enabled Kipps to See again, and he played crucial roles in our unmasking of both the Rotwell and Fittes conspiracies. In fact, he’d nearly died during the latter – it was a mark of how much our relationship had changed when I’d fought back tears at the sight of the ugly wound in his side, or how desperately Lockwood and the others had rushed to get him to a hospital.

Rounding out the company – with an even more dubious member/non-member status than Kipps – is Florence Bonnard, better known as Flo Bones. Flo’s a relic-woman – she spends her days trawling the banks of the Thames in a filthy blue puffer coat, searching for items holding traces of psychic energy, which then (usually) end up on the black market. Slightly-illegal activity aside, Flo’s incredibly talented and has helped us in a number of tight spots, many involving one of the most feared crime rings in London. She gets along best with George (which really isn’t surprising – neither could care less what anyone else thinks of them) but has known Lockwood the longest, and she has a strange affinity for licorice. Flo actually used to be an agent like us, but a traumatic experience that left her entire team dead put her off the profession. I’ve never asked her about it and don’t plan to – it’s not my business, for one, and for another, Flo just doesn’t talk about stuff like that – but I’m still holding out for seeing her swordplay in action one day. She beat Lockwood in the finals of that same competition in which he bested Kipps, and he’s _good._

And that’s us: Lockwood & Co. We might be unusual, and we sure as hell don’t have a clean track record, but I don’t care one bit. We’re more than just an agency – we’re a family.

We’d been doing quite well for ourselves since uncovering the Fittes conspiracy. Of course, very few people knew what had actually happened – DEPRAC didn’t want anyone else getting ideas – but rumors, speculation, and occasional bits of truth still placed us at the heart of things, and we’d had our hands full since then. We spent our days poring over records and restocking supplies, our nights vanquishing Visitors, and our in-between moments reliving the excitement or catching a much-needed nap, only to wake and do it all over again.

But being at the heart of things wasn’t always good. We’d seen and done a lot of things that most other agents had never even dreamed of, and those things had left their mark, in more ways than one.

Which was why I found myself wide-awake at two in the morning roughly a week after the Madeleine Willoughby case, my chest heaving and my pajamas clinging to my sweat-soaked body.

 _“Aldbury Castle again?”_ Skull was lounging against my windowsill regarding me shrewdly. I nodded.

“Isn’t it always?” Ghosts didn’t frighten me – not even the exceptionally dangerous Type Three roaming loose in my bedroom while I slept. I hardly ever had nightmares about old cases, and not even the memory of half-decayed Marissa Fittes could keep me up at night. But Aldbury Castle…Aldbury Castle had been where Lockwood and I had first journeyed to the Other Side. We’d barely survived, and the whole experience had left a terrible mark upon us.

Knowing that sleep would be impossible, I didn’t even attempt to lay back down. Instead, I reached for the little tray on my nightstand, my fingers closing around two very familiar pieces of jewelry. They were both necklaces, the first a rope of silver ending in a small diamond pendant, the second a beautiful sapphire on a fine gold chain.

 _“Blech. You two are disgusting.”_ I ignored Skull, instead focusing all my attention on the necklaces, on the familiar feelings of warmth and love they provided. The first, which Lockwood had given to me when we’d attended our first Fittes party, had proven useful on a case when I’d found myself without any other silver, and the second…well, the second had originally been a gift from Lockwood’s father to his mother, a ‘symbol of his undying devotion’, as Lockwood himself had put it. I’d stared at that necklace for ages when I’d found it glittering atop a stack of DEPRAC paperwork Lockwood had oh-so-casually left on my bed. In a strange way, the laissez-faire manner in which I’d received both gems made them all the more special, and I rarely went anywhere without at least one of them resting in the hollow of my throat.

The necklaces couldn’t make up for what I really needed in these instances, though, and so I slid back the covers, donned my dressing gown and slippers against the winter chill, and silently made my way across the room.

 _“I think I’ll stay up here, if it’s all the same to you,”_ Skull said. _“Although putting Lockwood off snogging you is always fun…”_

“Shut it,” I hissed. Skull raised his hands in a placating manner, though he was still chuckling.

 _“I know, I know. I have nightmares about that place too, and I’m already dead.”_ Skull paused, his expression actually becoming serious for a moment. _“I know you need this.”_

“Thank you, Skull,” I said, oddly touched. “Although I expect you’ll be back to your old self as soon as I’m better.” He snorted.

 _“Of course – I’ll have plenty of rude jokes ready when you come back. Suggestive comments, lewd gestures, the works.”_ I rolled my eyes but smiled slightly all the same.

“Later, then.” I slipped through my bedroom door, shut it softly behind me, and tiptoed down the stairs. I was careful to avoid the creaky spots in the hall and on the main staircase, not wanting to wake anyone, and it wasn’t long before I sat in the kitchen, the kettle boiling on the stove behind me as I listlessly flipped through one of George’s comics. The kettle began to whistle and I quickly shut it off before grabbing a mug and the fixings for tea. The hot liquid soothed me as it slid down my throat, warming my insides and making me feel a little better. I then headed for the living room.

“Aldbury Castle?” a familiar voice asked. I turned on the threshold to see Lockwood standing at the base of the stairs, clad as I was in pajamas and slippers.

“Of course,” I said quietly. I nodded to my mug. “I only just made tea – there’s hot water still, if you’d like some.”

“Thanks, Luce.” He shuffled off to the kitchen and soon returned, steaming mug in hand. For a while, we sat side by side on the sofa in companionable silence, the only sounds our stifled yawns and the occasional slurp as we sipped our tea. Lockwood’s free hand fell to his side, searching, and I clasped his fingers within my own.

“Blanket?” he whispered.

“Yes please.” We both stood, leaving our empty mugs on the side table, and Lockwood grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch. The blanket, handmade by George’s mum, was very warm and very large – exactly what we needed. Lockwood threw the blanket over his shoulders, beckoned me closer, and wrapped it around us both. We then sank back onto the couch, completely enveloped in the blanket’s calming warmth. Lockwood wrapped an arm around my waist while my head fell to his shoulder, our fingers intertwined.

It was far from the first time we’d done this – in fact, we’d done it so many times I’d lost count. Using a blanket to recreate our time huddled together under our one remaining spirit cape was, ironically enough, the only thing that worked to keep the nightmares at bay, and we followed our routine to the letter every time one or both of us found our sleep interrupted by memories of the Other Side. On particularly bad nights, we pulled the blanket up far enough that it covered our heads completely, but that didn’t seem necessary tonight. Already, I was calmer, and Lockwood seemed the same, his chest gently rising and falling as he breathed evenly.

“Do you think it will ever get better?” I asked. I felt Lockwood shrug.

“Perhaps,” he said softly. “Perhaps not.” He looked at me then, his hand reaching up to brush the streak of white amidst my otherwise dark hair. He had one too, a physical memory of that horrible night. Lockwood let my hair slip through his fingers like water before resting his hand gently on my cheek.

“We’ll get through this,” he whispered. “It won’t always be easy, but we will.” My eyes fluttered closed as I felt his lips brush my forehead.

“We always do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a filler, but some sweet Locklyle for you as well. Hope you enjoyed! :)


	5. Chapter 5

“Hey Luce, could you please add silver polish to the shopping list?” Lockwood called from the basement. “Our practice rapiers need some work.”

“Sure.” I grabbed a pen, my eyes scanning the Thinking Cloth for the list I was pretty sure someone had started the day before. I found it next to a particularly crass drawing in what I recognized as George’s style.

“Jesus, George, do you really have to be so detailed?” I muttered as I scribbled Lockwood’s request underneath the existing notes for milk and Swiss cheese.

“What’s that?” George himself was at the stove, busily flipping pancakes.

“Oh, nothing…”

“Might want to add straw, too,” Lockwood’s voice drifted upstairs again. “Esmeralda’s looking a bit worse for the wear.” There was a pause and the distinct _thud_ of a rapier hitting something heavy. “Oh, and I’m all out of chewing gum.”

“Anything else, dear?” I asked, my voice as sarcastically sickly-sweet as I could manage. There was the sound of feet hitting stairs, and then I felt a slight pressure against my back as Lockwood came to stand behind me, his chin on my shoulder. Even though I couldn’t see him, I could tell he was grinning.

“Well, actually…” I snorted and elbowed him playfully in the ribs.

“Make your own shopping list.”

“Now, where’s the fun in that?” Lockwood stepped away and flopped into his customary chair at the head of the table. He snagged a piece of bacon from the waiting platter and crunched it between his teeth. “What’s on the agenda for today, George?”

“Well, shopping, it sounds like,” came the reply, “and we’ve got that Raw-bones case to finish up tonight.”

“Ugh, I hate Raw-bones,” I groaned. “They’re so _gross.”_

“Could be worse,” Lockwood said with a shrug. “Could be a Screaming Spirit.” I shuddered. In my case, a Screaming Spirit was _much_ worse than a Raw-bones. Yes, Raw-bones were physically disgusting, but Screaming Spirits were, as their name suggested, _very_ loud, especially for sensitive Listeners. The last time we’d encountered one, I hadn’t been able to hear properly for three days afterwards.

“I also want to get a head start on our other case, the one we thought might be a Shining Boy,” George continued. He turned and set down a plate piled high with the now-finished pancakes, followed by pitchers of syrup and orange juice.

“That’s the one we’re doing on Friday?” I asked as I loaded up my plate. I took a bite and nearly moaned in pleasure. George could be a right pain the arse on a good day, but _damn,_ could that boy cook.

“Yeah, but it never hurts to prepare early. These spirits just seem to be getting more and more difficult.” It was true. Once we’d taken down Marissa Fittes, DEPRAC had immediately begun working to repair the damage she’d caused. It had taken considerable time, of course – journeying to the Other Side wasn’t to be taken lightly – and though they still weren’t finished, they’d managed to reopen a number of the blocked gateways preventing spirits from moving on properly. Type Ones, most of which had a pretty tenuous hold on the mortal world to begin with, were the first to begin disappearing when those gates reopened. As a result, it was rare for us to deal with them now – in fact, we’d had just two cases involving Type Ones over the last month. The Type Twos, it seemed, were more reluctant to leave, and the longer they stayed behind, the trickier they were likely to be.

“Group of Tendy’s agents had a devil of a time taking down a Visitor in Hampstead last night,” Lockwood reported from behind the morning paper. “Phantasm, it looks like.” Phantasms were notoriously difficult because you usually couldn’t see them except out of the corner of your eye.

“There was that wraith near Paddington Station recently, remember that one?” George asked, spraying crumbs all over the shopping list.

“Hey!” I protested. “We need to be able to read that!”

“Ask me if I care.”

“Why bother? I already know you don’t.”

“Shove it, Carlyle.”

“How’s the casebook coming, George?” Lockwood asked.

“Well, the Madeleine Willoughby case is all done, obviously,” George said. “I’ve called it ‘Clock and Dagger’ – isn’t that clever?”

“You’re so corny,” I muttered. George flicked a piece of bacon at me.

 _“Anyway…_ Clock and Dagger is all finished, and I’m almost caught up with the others as well. Although I could use some input from you, Lockwood, since you spent the most time with that Specter the other night.” Lockwood nodded.

“Not a problem – although it wasn’t all that interesting, really.”

“Still, we need to keep our records accurate,” George said.

“So it looks like we’ve got a trip to Mullet’s and the market in store, and George is off to the Archives. Holly and Kipps are stopping by after lunch to talk about upcoming cases, so we need to make sure we’re back by then.” I dropped my fork on my plate with a definitive clatter. “Chop chop, boys! We’ve a busy day ahead of us!”

*******

“Drop us here, if you will,” Lockwood instructed later that evening. The taxi slowed and stopped just outside the gates of an old cemetery.

“D’you need me to hang round?” the cabbie asked. He was a young man called Jake who’d shuttled us around quite a bit.

“No, no, that’s quite alright,” Lockwood reassured him as he reached over the front seat to pay our fare. “We’re not quite sure how long this one’s going to take, so we won’t keep you waiting.”

“Just be careful, now. Them Type Twos’re a piece of work.”

“We will. Thanks, Jake.” We hefted our things from the taxi and waved goodbye, then made our way up the crumbling steps to the gates, the sound of tires fading in the distance. Lockwood pushed the gate open, and we stepped inside.

“Right, then. We still have no idea what we’re looking for as a Source, but we got a fairly good idea of where to look last night,” Lockwood said as he made for the far corner of the cemetery. Cemeteries are tricky places to fight ghosts, as Sources there tend to be something buried with the deceased. This means digging, but the last thing you want to do is dig in the wrong place and stir up _another_ spirit, so we’d done a bit of reconnaissance the night before. Now that we had a better idea of where the Raw-bones had formed, we could scout around for likely Sources. With any luck, we’d have everything contained and tidied up by morning.

“Chain circle here, do you think?” I asked. We’d stopped at a crossroads of sorts between the graves, the grassy spot here a bit bigger than most. Lockwood nodded.

“We’ll make another one a bit further back,” he said. “Best have multiple safe zones tonight, I think.” George and I agreed, and we set to work creating the circles and making sure our belts were stocked.

“Thermometer’s useless tonight,” George remarked, tightening his scarf. “It’s bloody freezing out here.” I zipped up my jacket as far as it would go, shivering in the frigid night air and rubbing my gloved hands together to keep warm. That was another reason we’d done a scouting mission first – outdoor location in the middle of February? It was already so cold that we wouldn’t be able to feel the chill associated with Visitors.

“Half past nine,” Lockwood murmured, checking his watch. “Keep a sharp eye out – if we’re to have any chance at finding the Source, we’ll have to see where the ghost first appears.”

For about ten minutes, all we heard was the wind rustling through the trees, and all we saw was our own breath as it plumed before us like little clouds. Then the ghost-fog appeared.

“There.” Lockwood pointed at a spot roughly two rows over from where we sat. Slowly, we got to our feet and drew our rapiers, our free hands hovering over the salt bombs and flares at our waists.

“Quite the looker, isn’t he?” George muttered from my right as the ghost materialized.

“Could be a she,” I replied. “We never did find anything about this one…” It was basically impossible to tell with a Raw-bones – bloody, skinless corpses didn’t usually come with identifying features, and this one was par for the course. Its whole body was shimmering as if wet, stray drops of blood sizzling as they hit the dead grass beneath it. The eyes were unsettlingly large, and the mouth was little more than a gaping black maw. Crouched on all fours, it began to creep forward like some sort of ungainly spider, then stopped.

“Dammit,” Lockwood said softly. “That’s what I was afraid of – it doesn’t want to leave its Source. We’re not going to be able to stay inside the chains for long.”

“One of us would’ve had to leave the chains anyway to contain the Source,” I pointed out. “But you’re right. What’s our best option?”

“Well, strength’s in numbers, of course, but we can’t all rush the Source,” George said. “We’ll never get close enough. We can stay together as much as possible, but someone’s going to have to break off to search eventually.”

“I’ll do it,” I said at once. “Lockwood’s best with a rapier, so he should be part of the distraction, and my eyesight’s better than yours, George.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Only that you’ve had to stop every few minutes to wipe condensation off your glasses ever since we got here,” I said. “That’s precious time we haven’t got to spare, _and_ it means you’ve taken your eyes off the manifestation point, while I still have a fairly good idea of where our friend here showed up.”

“Luce has a point,” Lockwood said. “If she knows where to look, that’s half the battle. C’mon, George, we were just practicing our fighting techniques the other day – let’s put them to good use, shall we? On three, then: one…two…three!”

We leapt from the circle, George and Lockwood charging the ghost while I sprinted towards what I hoped was the right row. There was almost no moon, so I tore my torch from its place at my hip and flicked it on to the lowest setting, just enough to help me see. The Source could be anything, and I needed to find it quickly. A shriek rent the air, followed by a sharp hissing sound that I recognized as that of splattering ectoplasm. The boys must’ve engaged the ghost.

Another hiss caught my attention as I scanned the graves with my torchlight, and I looked down. I gasped and involuntarily jumped back at the sight of the blood staining the grass. Then I came to my senses – blood didn’t hiss, which meant that this too was ectoplasm. Trying not to think about how much the wet globs reminded me of the Red Room at Combe Carey Hall, I used my torch to follow the trail across the grass.

“Lucy, duck!” I dropped to all fours as a salt bomb went sailing over my head and smashed, spraying salt all over the Visitor, who’d apparently decided I was more interesting than the boys. Raising my rapier, I traced an intricate ward knot through the frozen air, keeping the ghost at bay. The crunching of grass told me the boys were once more at my side.

“Follow the ectoplasm!” I shouted. “This thing’s dripping everywhere, there’s bound to be loads near the Source!” Somehow, we continued to wind our way through the graves while still wielding our swords at the Raw-bones, which was now entirely too close for comfort…and between us and our nearest chain circle. The grass popped and cracked underfoot as our shoes came into contact with the plasm. At this rate, I was going to need to get the soles of my boots redone after tonight.

“Looks like this might be it!” Lockwood cried. “One of these three here…” The Raw-bones shrieked, and I wrenched a flare from my belt, smashing it right beneath the ghost. It screamed again, ectoplasm flying everywhere as it blew apart. We ducked and covered our heads, doing our best to keep the plasm from hitting bare skin. Roughly ten feet away, the Raw-bones was already reforming.

“We haven’t got much time!” I said. “Start looking!” We each took a gravestone and started searching, hoping against hope that the Source wasn’t underground. If it was, we might have no choice but to retreat and try again tomorrow. I tried everything I could think of, knocking, tapping, and running my fingers all over the stone – nothing.

“Dammit! What is your Source, you stupid ghost?” I knew that getting angry wasn’t the best move, but at the moment, I really didn’t care. I was cold, I was exhausted, and I was tired of dodging flying ectoplasm. The ghost surged forward again and I lashed out with my rapier, slicing it clean in half.

“I think I’ve got something!” George said suddenly. “This headstone’s hollow!” Lockwood was at his side in an instant. I couldn’t see what they were doing – I was too busy warding off the ghost, which was _really_ angry now – but I could hear the scraping and sliding of stone.

“There’s something in here!” Lockwood said.

“That’s bloody _fantastic!”_ I snapped through gritted teeth. “Now, could you please just get it in the damn Seal?” My arm felt like it was about to fall off, and the ghost wasn’t showing any signs of backing down.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, the ghost vanished.

“About time,” I muttered, wiping my forehead with the back of my hand. I was covered in ectoplasm and sweat, my hair all over the place, and I’m sure I didn’t smell much better. The boys looked just as bad, but George grinned triumphantly as he held up a little silver-mesh bag.

“Some sort of little trinket,” he said. “I didn’t get a good look at it, but no matter.”

“Another case closed,” Lockwood agreed, flashing his favorite megawatt grin. How he had the energy to do so, I had no idea, but I didn’t complain – the familiar sight warmed me from head to toe. “Quick trip to Clerkenwell’s, and then I think we’ve got time for cocoa before bed.”

“You _think_ we’ve got time?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. A stray piece of hair dropped into my line of vision; I tossed it aside with an impatient flick of my head. “You act like we’ve got a curfew or something.”

“Curfew? Please. Curfew is for adults,” George said with a sniff.

We couldn’t help it – right there in the middle of the cemetery, we burst out laughing.

*******

“Post’s here!” Holly called one afternoon about a week later. We’d just finished interviewing a client – nothing exciting, sounded like a pair of Lurkers – and were lounging around the front room enjoying the remnants of our tea and cake.

“Oh?” Lockwood looked up from the pages of his latest gossip magazine. George and I perked up as well – we rarely got much in the way of mail, so we were all interested.

“Looks fancy,” Holly said as she came back into the room. The envelope she held was large, and even from a distance I could tell it was made from heavy, expensive paper. Elegant script spelled out our address on the front. Lockwood accepted the envelope from Holly and slit it open with one slender finger.

“DEPRAC gala,” he announced, holding up what proved to be an invitation with an intricate silver border. “Although what the occasion is, I’m not sure…” I was just as confused. We were expecting some sort of event commemorating the Fittes battle, but that anniversary wasn’t until late summer, which was months away.

“Official naming ceremony?” Holly suggested. DEPRAC was turning the Fittes offices into a museum of sorts commemorating the Problem, and they were naming it after Lockwood.

“It can’t be,” I said, shaking my head, “the building isn’t finished yet.”

“They’re a bit too focused on dealing with the increase in difficult Type Twos,” George agreed. “That opening won’t be for ages. Besides, I think the invitation would’ve been a bit more personalized in that case, don’t you?” We all murmured in agreement. It went without saying that Lockwood, at the very least, would be a guest of honor at that event, and yet this invitation was as generic as they came.

“Maybe they’re just looking for an excuse to throw a party,” Lockwood said, “although I doubt it. There’s always an ulterior motive with DEPRAC. At any rate, we’re all going – anyone who’s anyone is bound to be there; we’d be foolish to miss it.”

“You just want to see your face plastered all over the tabloids again,” George muttered. He made a face. “I hate suits.” He forked a bit of cake with more force than usual, as if it was the dessert’s fault for mentioning such undesirable attire.

“Lockwood has a point,” Holly countered. “Knowing DEPRAC, this isn’t just a party, and if they make some sort of big announcement, we need to be there for it.” She turned to me. “Besides, it gives me an excuse to drag Lucy out to the shops.” She grinned, looking the cat who’d caught the canary.

“Wh-what?” I spluttered. Holly chuckled.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Do you really think I’m passing up an opportunity to get you to wear something nice, Lucy? We’ll make a day out of it – it’ll be fun.”

“If you say so,” I muttered, unconvinced. If I had to make a list of my least favorite things, shopping for clothes would definitely be up there, somewhere between Skull’s snarky remarks and George when he hasn’t showered.

“Someone will need to ring Kipps as well,” Lockwood was saying. “Make sure he’s been invited, since he’s technically no longer an agent.” It was a mark of how much times had changed that Lockwood was making sure Kipps was invited to something. “And I’ll need to check in with my tailor. Luce, what color are you wearing?”

“Huh?”

“Well, we’re going together, of course, are we not? We’ll need to coordinate.” Holly rolled her eyes and made a noise of disgust.

“Anthony John Lockwood, we _really_ need to work on your courting skills,” she said; I nearly choked on the sip of tea I’d just taken, I was laughing so hard. “But don’t worry, I’ll make sure you know with plenty of time to spare. And for the love of God, could you please wear a suit that actually _fits_ this time?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, what's that DEPRAC gala all about, hmm? Stay tuned! Healthy dose of Skull sass coming up next week as well! :)


	6. Chapter 6

The shopping trip was actually far less painful than I expected, all things considered. To my surprise, we found what Holly deemed the ‘perfect’ dress after only two shops (that I fell in love with it as well didn’t hurt), so we spent more time catching up over lunch than we did actually shopping. The shoes were another story – we went to five different places before we found anything, and though I was still highly skeptical about the pair we’d purchased, Holly insisted that I wasn’t allowed to return them.

“You look fabulous,” she said. “Lockwood won’t know what hit him.” I blushed furiously, wanting to argue that we’d hardly do anything at a DEPRAC event, but I kept quiet. After all, contrary to popular belief, I _did_ like looking nice once in a while, and I hardly ever had the chance to – on a case wasn’t exactly the time to bring out your best clothes, since more often than not, they ended up covered in ectoplasm. It wasn’t like I needed to impress anyone – I already knew how much Lockwood cared for me – but I was still going to enjoy the gala.

The night of the event, however, I wasn’t so sure. I went upstairs after a light supper to find my room looked like a tornado had gone through it – more of a tornado than usual, anyway.

“Where have you been?” Holly demanded. “How am I supposed to get you ready if you’re not here?” She was already dressed, clad in a dress of palest pink with a black sash, her hair held back by a matching ribbon. The fabric hugged her body like a glove and the hem barely hit mid-thigh. Honestly, I kind of envied her ability to pull off such a dress – I’d tried one like it in the shops, but I was just a tad too short to make it look good.

“I…what?” I mumbled, too thrown off by the mess to understand what she’d said.

“You promised I could help you get ready,” Holly reminded me. “But I can’t do that until you’ve showered, and we haven’t got much time!” She grabbed a clean towel and pushed it into my hands.

“Your bathroom’s tiny, so I’ll have to set up shop out here. Quickly, now, and don’t forget to brush your teeth!”

 _“Bossy, isn’t she?”_ muttered Skull, who was once again lounging against my windowsill. _“I still say the frying pan would’ve been a good move…”_

“Oh, shut up,” I told him. I turned back to Holly. “How much time do I have?” She glanced at the clock on my bedside table.

“Not enough, so you’d best get going.” She handed me a stack of clothes. “Put these on when you get out of the shower, then we can get you ready without worrying about your dress.”

My shower was much quicker than usual (colder, too – someone must’ve been hogging the hot water downstairs), and I shivered slightly as I slipped on the jeans and button-down shirt Holly had given me. I toweled off my hair as best I could, then returned to my bedroom. As I had no vanity, Holly had commandeered my bedside table. It was covered with all sorts of things I hardly knew the name for, never mind the use. Needless to say, I was rather apprehensive as I took a seat.

“You look like you’ve seen a Visitor, Lucy,” Holly said with a chuckle. I managed a nervous laugh.

“Well, there’s one over there,” I said, gesturing to Skull. He waggled his eyebrows at me, and I stuck my tongue out at him in response.

“I’ll go easy on you, I promise,” Holly said.

Holly is nothing if not true to her word. Half an hour later, she was finished, and although the differences were subtle, I hardly recognized the girl in the mirror. Holly had blow-dried my hair, using a large brush to make sure it hung smooth and even, parted it to one side, and placed two delicate, sparkling hairpins just above my left ear. My nails were trimmed and filed smooth, and I’d allowed her to apply the barest hint of makeup to my eyes.

“Perfect,” Holly declared, smiling broadly into the mirror behind me. “Now we just need the dress!” I returned to the bathroom to change, chuckling as the sounds of Holly tidying up drifted under the door. Old habits die hard, I guess.

“Oh, Lucy, you are a _vision!”_ Holly gasped as I opened the bathroom door. “Do a twirl for us, yeah?” I obliged, the skirt of my dress swirling out around me. My dress was a deep shade of purple, the color the sky turns just before plunging into the total darkness of night. The strapless bodice hugged my torso as if it had been made for me, and the high-low skirt (which was indeed excellent for spinning) whispered across my knees in front while falling to skim the floor in back. I absolutely loved it.

 _“Well, well, somebody actually has_ curves _under all that shapeless agent-wear.”_

“I put up with you, it’s true, but would you stop staring at me?” I groaned in exasperation. “It’s kind of creepy, given that you’re dead.”

 _“Pssht. You know you’re secretly jealous. Why have Lockwood when you could have this?”_ Skull gestured to himself suggestively.

“Skull apparently fancies himself a real lady killer,” I told Holly.

_“Was that supposed to be a pun? Because I have killed quite a few people…”_

“Oh, shut up.”

 _“And even if it wasn’t, who are you to judge? I’ll have you know I was quite popular with the ladies in my time…”_ He waggled his eyebrows again, and I had to remind myself for the umpteenth time that punching a Type Three was a very bad idea.

“Shoes, and jewelry,” Holly instructed. I sat down on the bed and opened the shoebox, revealing glittering silver heels. The heels were chunky, unlike Holly’s towering stilettos, but they were still a good few inches higher than I was used to, and I was convinced I was going to trip and break myself before the night was out. I slipped my feet into the shoes – they were surprisingly comfortable – and reached for the little tray holding my necklaces. Unfortunately, the sapphire on its gold chain didn’t work with the rest of my color scheme, so I picked up the diamond pendant and fastened it around my neck.

 _“I’m already having nightmares of what will happen when you go downstairs,”_ Skull said, making exaggerated retching sounds. _“Blech!”_

“Stop being rude,” Holly scolded.

“Since when can you hear him?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. Holly shrugged.

“I can’t, but I can still see him as well as any of you, and his current facial expressions leave a lot to be desired.”

_“Forget the frying pan – a shredder would be better. Or a set of sharp knives.”_

“Are you quite finished?” I snapped. Skull snorted.

 _“Me, finished? Never.”_ I rolled my eyes.

“Well, you’re done for now, because we’ve got to go. Behave while I’m out, would you?”

_“No promises.”_

“Didn’t think so. Do we have everything, Hol?”

“I think so,” Holly said. “Angie is meeting us there, of course, and I’ll come back tomorrow to pick up my stuff, so we just need the boys.” Angela – Angie – is Holly’s roommate-turned-girlfriend. She works for DEPRAC, so she’d been called in early to set up.

“Give me a minute to get downstairs before you follow,” Holly said. “I want you to have the full effect…” She suppressed a little squeal of excitement. “Cinderella is off to the ball!” I laughed in spite of myself. Perhaps Holly was being a little silly, but I _did_ kind of feel like a princess…

Our shoes clacked as we descended the attic stairs, and Holly motioned for me to wait at the base of the steps, out of sight of the main staircase. We could hear movement in the sitting room – the boys were waiting for us.

“Wait for the moment – you’ll know when,” she whispered before disappearing.

“Ah, Holly!” Lockwood’s voice drifted upstairs. “You look positively smashing! An excellent color on you.”

“Likewise, Mr. Lockwood,” Holly replied, the grin evident in her tone. “And George, you’ve scrubbed up nicely as well!”

“I’ll just be glad when this is all over,” George grumbled. The other two chuckled, and I decided it was time to make my entrance. I stepped forward hesitantly, mindful of my heels as I navigated the hall carpet, and paused at the top of the stairs. Lockwood was laughing heartily at something else Holly had said, but his laughter died when he caught sight of me.

“Lucy…” he whispered. I slowly began my descent, one hand on the railing and the other holding my skirts, my eyes never leaving his. After what seemed an eternity, I reached the bottom, dropping my skirt to accept Lockwood’s hand. He lifted our linked hands over our heads, and I gave a slow spin.

“Beautiful,” he said softly. His fingers drifted upwards to trace the diamond at my throat before gently cupping my cheek, his lips brushing mine in a whisper of a kiss. As he pulled away, I felt my cheeks pink but smiled all the same. We’d kissed before, of course – we’d shared our first kiss the night he gave me the sapphire necklace, and there had been plenty of others since – but Lockwood had had trouble expressing emotions for as long as I’d known him, so every display of affection, no matter how small, was precious.

“Your chariot awaits, mademoiselle.” Lockwood bowed deeply and offered me his arm, which I accepted with a laugh. He and George helped Holly and I into our coats, and the four of us stepped outside to the waiting cab.

The museum and gallery memorializing the Problem was going to have a grand hall, but as the reconstruction was as of yet unfinished, DEPRAC had rented out a different venue for the evening. It was a standard events hall, but the decorating committee had done a surprisingly nice job – the silver and white decorations were both classy and made us feel like we’d stepped into a winter wonderland. I had to admit it was rather refreshing to think of snow without the usual connotations (longer nights, and by extension, more difficult ghost hunts).

“Oh, this is lovely!” Holly exclaimed as she took in the décor. Her smile widened further as she caught sight of a familiar figure approaching. The figure was that of a young woman, roughly our age. She was tall and slim and wore a long, flowing dress of gunmetal grey, its sleeveless silhouette showing off her toned arms. Her dark red hair was pulled up in a casually messy updo that had probably taken her all of five seconds (I, for the record, wouldn’t have been able to achieve the same look in five hours, even if I’d had long enough hair), and a smoky makeup effect enhanced her bright green eyes. The young woman grinned broadly and reached forward to grasp Holly’s shoulders before kissing her on both cheeks. It was, of course, Angie.

If it had taken me far too long to warm up to Holly, the same couldn’t be said for her girlfriend. Perhaps it was because I knew from the start that she wasn’t any sort of competition (shallow and petty of me, I know), or perhaps it was just because she was really cool, but Angie and I got along like a house on fire. She had the feisty personality to go along with her red hair, she loved sneaking biscuits when she thought Holly wasn’t looking, and she was capable of commentary that would’ve made even Skull proud. (Come to think of it, she and Skull would get along swimmingly. Maybe I should introduce them.) She was agent-trained but had lost her Talent fairly young, so she’d gone the official route instead, taking up a position with DEPRAC. She and Holly had been together for quite a while now – sometime shortly after the Aldbury Castle affair, if I remembered correctly – and in that time, Angie had become as natural a part of our friend group as Flo and Kipps.

“Hello, my love,” Angie said warmly. “You look stunning.” She turned to the rest of us. “Lucy, Lockwood, George. Lovely to see you all, as always.”

“Likewise,” I said, returning her grin. “That dress is fabulous.”

“You really think so?” Angie picked up the hem of her skirt and swished it a little, allowing herself a little giggle as she did so. “It’s really a nice change from the same old uniform.”

“Hey – you know I like your uniform,” Holly said. Angie threw her head back and laughed heartily.

“You like me better out of it,” she replied, waggling her eyebrows suggestively. She, Holly, and I burst out laughing, George made a strangled sort of choking sound, and Lockwood turned a (quite frankly adorable) shade of bright pink. I chuckled at his blush and squeezed his hand; he squeezed back and flashed me a warm smile in return.

“You look lovely, Angie,” he said then, “and so does the hall. DEPRAC really outdid themselves this time.”

“It does help when you’ve got someone with an eye on the decorating committee, doesn’t it?” Angie agreed. “Clarissa’s got serious talent. Much better than the last gala.” She glanced around the hall. “I’d best do another circuit of the room, see if the team needs anything, but I’ll be back soon. I’m not needed for the speeches. See you in a few, love.” She and Holly kissed again, and Angie strode swiftly across the room and out of sight.

“Do we know what time Kipps is arriving?” Holly asked once Angie had gone.

“He’s already here,” I replied, having noticed the tall, ginger-haired young man out of the corner of my eye. I nodded towards the other side of the hall, where he was deep in conversation with a small knot of people, none of whom we recognized. He caught sight of us and waved, and we returned the gesture.

“We’ll have to be sure to say hello,” Lockwood said. “For now, though, I’d love to know why we’re here.”

As if in answer to his question, lights flashed over the small stage at the far end of the room, and Inspector Montagu Barnes appeared. He strode to the podium and cleared his throat, although he needn’t have done so – everyone had gone silent as soon as they’d seen him. It seems we weren’t the only curious attendees this evening.

“Good evening, and thank you for coming,” Barnes said into the microphone. He sounded about as excited to be there as if he’d been asked to read someone’s grocery list, but as this was pretty much the norm for Barnes, no one questioned it. “On behalf of DEPRAC, I have some news to share with you all tonight. Our work towards ending the Problem has continued to progress, and it is time to transition into the next stage – what may well be one of the _final_ stages.” My friends and I exchanged significant glances at that. Had they finally taken care of all the gateways in the Other Side?

“As our work has progressed over the last several months, more and more spirits have been able to pass on, leading to fewer individual hauntings. While we will not be neglecting such cases moving forward, the next stage’s focus will be on much bigger sites. Sealing these sites is likely to be far more difficult and dangerous than anything we’ve faced before, and we will be expanding our reaches beyond the immediate London area to assist teams in more rural locales. Agencies will receive more information about specific assignments in the coming days. Work will begin as soon as possible.” Barnes cleared his throat a bit awkwardly before finishing, “Thank you all for your continued service, and enjoy your evening.” With that, he stepped away from the microphone.

“Now _that_ sounds intriguing,” George said, his eyebrows raised as he watched Barnes leave the stage and a small band take his place. “Although I’m not sure why I had to wear this thing to hear it.” He tugged at his suit jacket.

“Probably wanted to guarantee us one last night of fun before we all go out and risk our lives again,” Holly said. She reached over and pulled George’s hand away from his jacket. “Stop, you’ll ruin it. Anyway, it sounds like we’re talking _really_ significant sites for this stage – major battlefields, historical monuments, that sort of thing. That’s going to be _much_ more difficult than your standard residential job, isn’t it?”

“None of the Type Twos we’ve tackled recently were exactly easy,” Lockwood pointed out, “but you’ve got a point. Some of these sites will have loads of ghosts.” His face lit up with excitement. “I wonder what our assignment will be? Damn Barnes, it’s just like him to drop a bomb like that and leave us all hanging!”

“We’ll know soon enough,” I said with a laugh. “In the meantime, if DEPRAC’s throwing us a party, we might as well enjoy it.” I nodded towards the band, who had started up a jaunty jazz tune. “Shall we?”

It’s a rare occasion indeed when agents can set aside their rapiers and salt bombs for a night of fun, and we made the most of it. I wasn’t the world’s greatest dancer, but countless hours of rapier practice had made Lockwood very light on his feet, and he twirled me seemingly effortlessly around the dance floor, the both of us laughing and smiling. I saved a dance for George (decidedly less graceful than Lockwood; the both of us spent the entire song trying to avoid stepping on each other’s toes) as well as Holly (this one filled with much spinning and giggling). We did manage to say hello to Kipps, although as he was with his former teammates, we didn’t intrude for long – Bobby Vernon was alright, but Kat Godwin fairly despised the lot of us, so we didn’t fancy spending too long in her company. The hours passed quickly, and before we knew it, the party was over. We bid Holly and Angie goodnight, collected our coats, and headed out into the frigid February night. Thankfully, Lockwood had arranged a ride beforehand with our old friend Jake, so we bypassed the long line of agents waiting for available cabs and were soon on our way back to Portland Row. We were far too excited and intrigued by Barnes’ announcement to sleep, so we settled in the sitting room with mugs of steaming cocoa and a plate of biscuits, and it was very late indeed before we finally ventured upstairs to bed.

 _“So, what’s the big news?”_ Skull was waiting for me in my room, lounging against the windowsill and observing the goings-on in the street, such as they were in the middle of the night.

“DEPRAC’s pulling out the big guns,” I told him as I tossed my shoes in the wardrobe and grabbed a pair of pajamas. I headed into the bathroom to change, leaving the door just the slightest bit ajar so he could still hear me. I wasn’t worried about him attempting to follow me – I’d laid down some ground rules when he’d first returned after the Fittes debacle, now that he was no longer confined to the jar, and he knew perfectly well that breaking them would mean an immediate one-way trip to the furnaces, no matter what I thought of him. “We’re being assigned to the big sites now.”

_“Ooooo, that sounds fun. Where are we going?”_

“Not sure yet,” I said as I slipped the pajamas over my head. I reemerged and hung my dress carefully back on its hanger before crawling into bed. “We’re supposed to find out soon.”

_“I’ll be sure to be there, then. If you’re going down in a blaze of glory, I want to be there to see it.”_

“Oh, hush, you,” I said, but I chuckled all the same. “Goodnight, Skull.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plenty of Skull sass, some Holly/Lucy bonding, and a fancy party - what more could you want? Next time: the team finds out their assignment! Cheers!


	7. Part Three: The First Night

We didn’t have to wait long to find out our assignment. It arrived the very next morning, sealed in a large manila envelope that, judging by its bulk, contained more than just the assignment itself. Anxious though we were to find out where we’d be working, we agreed not to open it until Holly arrived, and we rung Kipps as well – he was practically a member of our team, after all, and since he was both no longer affiliated with an agency and had (according to official records, anyway) already lost his Talent, we suspected he wouldn’t have received an assignment of his own. He hadn’t (or at least, he hadn’t heard anything when we called), and he agreed to drop by just before noon. George and I passed the time by preparing lunch, and Lockwood spent some quality time in the basement with his rapier and the practice dummies. Holly and Kipps arrived in short order, and we settled around the kitchen table, the manila envelope resting next to Lockwood’s plate. He’d taken all of two bites of his sandwich when he evidently decided he couldn’t wait any longer and tore open the envelope. We all watched with bated breath as he withdrew the contents and began to read the top sheet.

“Well?” Kipps asked. “Where’s Lockwood and Co. headed this time?” He sounded just as eager as the rest of us felt, and it warmed my heart to think of how much he’d changed since I’d first met him. Once upon a time, he wouldn’t have been caught dead even speaking to us; now, he was one of us. Lockwood looked up, his dark eyes wide with disbelief.

“Barnes wasn’t kidding when he said we’d be tackling some serious sites,” he said. “We’ve been assigned the Tower of London.”

Silence reigned for a moment as we processed Lockwood’s words. Then:

“My _God.”_

The whisper came from George, but he spoke for all of us. _The Tower of London?_ Even with my limited schooling, I knew the stories about that place. It had been notorious in its heyday – if you were sent there, you probably weren’t coming back out alive.

_“The Tower of London, eh?”_ Skull muttered from his place in the far corner of the kitchen. _“Interesting…if you wanted murder, mayhem, and madness, you certainly got it.”_

“What else does the letter say?” Holly wanted to know. Lockwood looked at the top sheet again.

“Well, there’s a list of all the sites involved in this project,” he said. “The Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge – that’s an unusual one, right on the river and all – Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, the National Gallery, Kings Cross, Stonehenge, several major battlefields…they’re all over the country. None of the teams are going to have an easy time of it, it seems, but the Tower of London…wow. That’s a case if there ever was one.” He continued reading and suddenly grinned. “We’ve been given the Tower because Barnes thinks we can handle it – it’s going to be devilishly tricky, of course, but he knows what we’re capable of, and that we’re the best for the job.” From his corner, Skull snorted.

_“Is that really what it says? How much did it pain old Monty to write that?”_ I burst into laughter, then, belatedly remembering that I was the only one who could hear anything Skull said, blushed and repeated his question for the benefit of the group. Everyone else laughed, too – Barnes had made it clear from day one that we were a serious collective pain in his backside.

“It really does say so,” Lockwood said, still chuckling as he turned the letter around for us to see. “And, let’s see…well, it goes without saying that we’re all on this one together, of course, and we have the option to request as many extra agents as we think we might need. Seems like a fair few teams don’t have assignments, either because they’re being held to continue dealing with individual hauntings, or because they no longer have a supervisor. Those in the latter category will be divided amongst the sites as needed.”

“I know you’ve always been one to fly solo, but that might be a good idea,” Kipps said. “There are only five of us, after all, and you know I’m no use at all without the goggles – although I suppose you’ll have to request me as well, won’t you? You asked me to join you, and of course I will, but I’ll bet I’m not on Barnes’ list.” He was right – it wasn’t exactly common knowledge that Kipps had an alternate means of accessing his Talent, so he might’ve been left off DEPRAC’s list altogether.

“And while you and Lucy are top-tier agents, I’ve never been nearly as confident as either of you,” Holly added. “The Tower is huge – it will take us ages to deal with it unless we split up, and we know how _that_ always ends.”

“I agree with these two,” George said. “I’ll have to do some research to be sure, but we could be dealing with quite a few really vengeful spirits here – we’re going to want some backup.” He was already scribbling some sort of list on the Thinking Cloth.

“Excellent points all around, and I agree that we’d be fools not to want a bigger team for this one,” Lockwood said. “George, I’ll leave that to you – you do your thing, and once we’ve got a better idea of what we’re facing, we can decide how many extra agents to ask for. You’ll probably want this as well.” He extracted a book from the pile of papers – that explained the size of the envelope – and passed it down the table. There was a picture of the Tower on the book’s front cover. George snorted.

“If you think I’m trusting DEPRAC to be my only source of information for this, you’re mad,” he said. “I’ll take a look at this, of course, but I’ll be heading to the Archives as soon as we’re done here.” It was a fair statement – George was arguably the best researcher in London and was bound to be much more thorough than whoever had put these folders together.

“What about asking your old team, Kipps?” I asked, looking at the ginger-haired young man. “I know we’re not exactly best mates, but even I have to admit they’re good.” Kipps sighed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve not exactly been on the best terms since I left Fittes – Kat especially saw it as a betrayal, me leaving and then working with you lot. As far as I know, they never chose a new team leader, so they very well might not have an assignment. I can ask, but I’m not making any promises.”

“Thanks for the offer, Kipps,” Lockwood said. “We might not have the best track record with your old team, but Lucy’s right – at least we’ve worked with them before and know they’re capable. Even if they say no, at least you’ll have tried.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a fair few people I’d like to speak with as well, and we’ve got plenty of other things to do – ordering supplies, making plans, and all that.” He flashed us one of his famous megawatt grins. “If this is the last big case for Lockwood and Co., let it not be said we didn’t make the most of it, eh? Off we go, then, chop chop!”

In spite of all the excitement at lunch, Holly and I passed most of the afternoon in relative boredom. We’d been tasked with ordering supplies for the case, but we wouldn’t really know what we needed until George returned from the Archives. We knew the Tower was big, we knew it had seen some truly ugly deaths, but until we had more concrete information, there wasn’t much to do. We dutifully cataloged our current supply stash, keeping in mind that we still had a few residential cases on our upcoming schedule, and we made a separate list of things we knew we’d need, leaving specific quantities for later. After that, Holly cleaned up the kitchen (I offered to help, but she shooed me away), and I idly flipped through a mystery novel I’d left on the coffee table, not really processing what I was reading. Kipps phoned roughly half an hour later to let us know that his old team had (reluctantly) agreed to join us – he’d been correct in saying that they’d hadn’t been assigned a new team leader before Fittes fell apart, so they didn’t have an official assignment. We thanked him and promised to ring back with any new updates, and Holly and I passed the time until the boys’ return with some card games, although I’m ashamed to admit that even Skull’s weakest attempts to throw me off my game actually worked.

Lockwood and George returned at dinnertime, Lockwood with bags of takeaway, George’s backpack stuffed with books and scribbled-upon notepads. As usual, we set upon the food as if we hadn’t eaten in days (Holly with a bit more restraint than the rest of us, but even she can’t resist a good Pad Thai) and waited eagerly for George to share what he’d found.

“This one’s a doozy, all right,” he said. There was already a noodle stuck to the front of his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice or care, and even Holly was too interested in what George had to say to bother telling him. “We’re working with a lot of speculation and rumor, here – a lot of the stories have either been lost or don’t add up. What I _can_ tell you is that nineteen people were executed in the Tower itself – twelve during the World Wars, and the rest well before that. And those remaining seven were pretty important people – we’re talking Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey. On top of that, over one hundred people were executed on Tower Hill, just north of the Tower itself.”

_“One hundred?”_ Holly repeated, sounding aghast.

“Yeah – here’s hoping _they_ don’t all manifest, or we’ll be in big trouble. The spirits within the Tower are going to be more than enough as it is. We’ve got people executed for treason, a few murders, the whole debacle of ‘the princes of the tower’ was never conclusively solved…and there have been rumors of at least one animal ghost as well.”

“Animal?” I repeated. That was unusual.

“The Tower had quite the menagerie at one point,” George explained. “Now, of course, it’s only the famed ravens who live there, but there were once lions, bears, monkeys, even an elephant.”

“How big a team do you think we’ll need, George?” Lockwood asked. George grimaced and shrugged; the noodle broke free of his shirt and dropped out of sight.

“Hard to say, really. The maps I found…well, it’s a huge complex with several different buildings, plus there’s the outer walkway. I’d really like to walk around during the day, if we can, to get a better idea of what we’re dealing with here. From what I’ve read, the spirits could be any number of places within the complex, so we’re going to have to cover most of it to get the job done.”

“We’ll see if we can arrange a visit, then,” Lockwood declared. “Best not to rush into this one, it sounds like.” He turned to Holly and me. “Did you girls come up with a supplies list?”

“The start of one, anyway,” I said, showing him what we’d written. “We know what we need, of course, but we weren’t sure how much, without hearing from George. Now that we know a little bit more, we can start adding quantities.”

“I’d add spare rapiers to this,” Lockwood said, eyes scanning the list. “Just in case. You never know who might need one. Otherwise, it looks like you’ve covered everything – well done. We’ll ring DEPRAC in the morning, see if we can’t get access to the Tower sometime this week. After that, we can finalize our orders, put in requests for extra agents, and start planning.”

We were able to visit the Tower three days later. Our tour, led by one of the famed Yeoman Warders, emphasized just how difficult this case was going to be. Just as George had said, there were several buildings within the complex, many of them associated with those who’d been executed within the Tower, and the sprawling lawns stretched in all directions. The outer walkway was even more disconcerting, full of narrow, twisting passageways that were rather dark even at high noon, and many steep staircases. We’d have a devil of a time battling any ghosts that manifested in such close quarters, there really wasn’t anywhere to put an iron circle, and all those twists and turns would make it all too easy for a spirit to sneak up on us unawares. On top of all that, both the grounds and the outer walkways (the latter’s passages had no window glass) were exposed to the elements, so our thermometers would be all but useless – it was now late winter, still cold enough at night that distinguishing cold related to the weather from cold related to ghosts would be next to impossible. We’d really have to be on our guard.

“We’ll want to at least double our team if possible, I think,” George said after we’d thanked our guide and started for home. “There are plenty of places we’ll need to be, and nobody should be going off alone.” We readily agreed, and Lockwood had the cabbie take a detour past DEPRAC so he could put in the request.

A few days later, we had our team: the five of us; Kat, Bobby, and a boy called Martin from Fittes; and a four-person team from Grimble’s, bringing us to a round dozen. I hadn’t really worked with Grimble agents much during my stint as a freelancer, but I’d never really heard anything bad about them, either. Lockwood had told us that when he’d put in the request, he’d been asked to leave as much information as possible about the case – DEPRAC would then combine that information with their own research, determine which unassigned teams might be suited to the case based on their abilities and previous work, and pass the case along to those agents. The unassigned teams could then do their own research and sign up. Martin and the Grimble team were unknowns, but we had to trust that they would be a good fit – they knew what they were getting into when they signed on, and if they’d felt they couldn’t handle it, they would’ve chosen a different site. For better or for worse, we had our team – we could only hope it would be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we've reached the big case - the Tower of London! I've done extensive research for this part of the fic (I am a librarian, after all - it's how we roll) - it involves real places and real people, so I wanted to do it justice. All physical descriptions of the Tower should be accurate, as well as most of the historical information. However, in some cases, that historical information is either incomplete, lost to time, or the details vary across different accounts, and I've had to fill in the blanks as best I could. There is also at least one instance where the legends didn't quite work for my story - for instance, Catherine Howard was indeed executed at the Tower, but her ghost is said to haunt Hampton Court Palace. Wherever something isn't quite as history says it should be, I hope my readers (and my ghosts!) will forgive me.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the Tower we go! I was so pleased by how excited everyone was to hear the location of the case - I hope you all like how it turns out! Let the shenanigans begin...

There was no set schedule for this stage – as long as DEPRAC was aware of our plans, we could proceed whenever we felt ready. Our preparations seemed to take both forever and no time at all. We had team meetings, ordered supplies and made runs to the shops for even more, and finalized plans as best we could. We had no idea how long it would actually take to clear the Tower of any lingering ghosts, mostly because we didn’t know how many ghosts to expect or how difficult they’d be. We’d just have to survey the scene when we arrived and go from there.

We also assigned partners and locations for the first night. Due to the sheer size of the fortress, Lockwood and I were separated to start – we were a formidable pair, and everyone on our team (save Kipps, of course) had decent Talent, but we weren’t taking any chances. Until we knew exactly what we were dealing with, best to split up the team’s strongest Talents so every pair had a fighting chance. For that first night, then, Lockwood would explore the chapel with Oliver, one of the Grimble agents, and Kipps and I would tackle the outer walkway. Having Kipps as my partner meant I could bring Skull along as well – he was, after all, a well-guarded secret, so “introducing” him to the newcomers was out of the question, but we couldn’t deny that Skull could be extremely helpful when he wanted to be, especially not after he’d saved Lockwood’s and my lives at Fittes House. Having him on our side could make all the difference. As for the rest of us, George and Keith, another of the Grimble team, would be in the White Tower, Bobby and Kat would explore several of the smaller buildings, and Martin and Jen and Holly and Emma would roam the grounds. I knew this last pairing made Holly feel a little better; Emma wasn’t the Grimble team’s leader, but she was their strongest Talent and a dab hand with a rapier. Holly’s weakness in the field had always been her confidence, so it was a good match.

Finally, we reached a point where we couldn’t think of anything else to do. George, Bobby, and Jen had spent hours in the Archives, producing entire notebooks’ worth of names, dates, stories, maps, and other information. We’d practiced our ward knots, our poor straw friends looking their worst since the siege of Portland Row, and the storeroom was overflowing with supplies. It was time. We notified DEPRAC and marked our calendars – come the first Friday of March, we’d be at the Tower.

On the appointed day, I tried to sleep in as late as I could, knowing I could very well be awake most of the night. The enormity of the upcoming case soon got the better of me, though, and I gave it up as a bad job, instead hauling myself out of bed and into the shower around midmorning. After a late breakfast and a nice cuppa, I set to work, making sure my belt was stocked with everything I needed (salt bombs, magnesium flares, cannisters of iron filings, and plenty of extra-minty chewing gum) and helping Lockwood and Holly oil the iron chains. I polished rapiers and double-checked inventory, drank more tea, and tried to help make dinner but was promptly kicked out of the kitchen by George, who was no doubt using cooking as a means of stress management – in any case, our evening meal was exceptionally good that night. After dinner, it was time to dress for the occasion, pack Skull carefully in my bag, and cram everything into the boot of the cab. It was a tight fit, but somehow, we managed, and we were soon on our way.

The rest of the team met us at the Tower with their own shares of the supplies, and we spent the next several minutes unloading the cabs and hauling everything inside, piling it all in a heap on the nearest expanse of lawn. Along the way, we nodded to the team of DEPRAC officials, Angie among them, stationed just outside the Tower’s entrance. They’d be there through the night, on hand in case of emergency and ready to administer first aid (or more serious medical help) if needed. We hoped we wouldn’t need them, but having them nearby was much more reassuring than the thought of having to call for an ambulance, especially in the case of ghost-touch, which could have serious (or even fatal) repercussions if not treated quickly. The Tower itself was quiet, the Yeoman Warders and the ravens safely tucked away for the night.

“Alright, gang,” Lockwood said as we gathered around our stash of supplies. “First order of business: tea.”

“Already on it,” said George, holding up one end of an extension cord. The cord snaked off into the darkness, presumably towards one of the DEPRAC vans. He pulled a hot plate and our trusty kettle from his pack.

“Are you serious?” Kat Godwin asked, giving the boys her best _‘What the hell?’_ expression.

“Of course I am,” Lockwood replied. “Never underestimate the power of a good cup of tea, Ms. Godwin. Or biscuits, for that matter – but you must respect the biscuit rule, that’s most important.”

“Tea and biscuits,” Kat repeated. She shook her head, as if we’d finally confirmed once and for all that we were all completely mental.

_“Forget Holly – can we hit_ her _with a frying pan instead? She’s seriously annoying.”_

“Hush,” I muttered. “No ghost-touching allowed, remember?”

_“Aww, you’re no fun. She just_ scoffed _at the_ biscuit rule! _Even I know that’s serious business, and I can’t even_ eat _biscuits.”_

“You’re starting to sound like a broken record. And zip it, will you? Remember, Kat is a Listener, too – she’s not as good as I am, but she can probably still hear you.” Indeed, Kat’s facial expression was now one of confusion, as if she knew she’d heard something but couldn’t figure out from where. The last thing I needed was for _her_ to find out about Skull – that’d be the end of him for sure.

“Here you go, Luce.” Lockwood brought me back to the present, and I accepted the steaming mug in his outstretched hand. Soon, the majority of us held hot drinks (Kat remained skeptical and had not accepted one, and Martin had brought his own Thermos), and we sipped them as Lockwood reviewed our plans for the evening.

“We’ll split off into our groups and take as many readings as we can. Keep an eye out for any sightings – engage if need be, but I’d like to do as much recon as possible tonight _before_ everything goes to hell.”

“Which we know it will,” I said, grinning. Lockwood grinned back.

“Wouldn’t be a proper Lockwood and Co. case if it didn’t! So, we’ll take a look around, do what we need to do, and meet back here in two hours for a debrief and some more tea. Everyone have what they need? Yes? Off we go, then!” We drained our mugs, gathered our things, and prepared to set off. Kipps and I made for the nearest entrance to the outer walkways, and we were halfway there when someone called us back.

“Luce, hold up a minute!” I turned to see Lockwood striding confidently across the grass. When he reached my side, we locked eyes for but a moment before he cupped my face in his hands and kissed me soundly.

“Thought I’d best go all in on this one, don’t you agree?” he asked when he pulled back.

“I…yeah,” I breathed. It was a pretty lame response, but I didn’t know what else to say.

“Good luck, love.” With a wink and another grin, he was gone.

“You two are something else,” Kipps said, his tone one of fond exasperation as we resumed our walk to the passageway.

“Oh, hush,” I replied, elbowing him playfully in response.

_“Blech! I_ never _want to be that close to Lockwood again – I think I might vomit.”_

“You’re dead, and you haven’t eaten in over a hundred years. I don’t think you could even if you tried.”

_“Unfortunately, you have a point, Carlyle. Damn you both to hell, or wherever it is you people end up.”_

“You’ll live – figuratively speaking, anyway. We’re almost inside now, so you can come out if you want. _No_ ghost-touching, though!”

_“You take all the fun out of death. But you_ did _let me out of my jar, so I guess there’s that.”_ Kipps and I reached the entrance to the passageway then. We peered up the staircase but couldn’t see a thing, all but the first few steps completely shrouded in darkness.

“Don’t hesitate on a threshold – it never goes well,” I muttered. Without another thought, I lifted my foot to the first step and began to climb, Kipps following just behind. The stairwell was bitterly cold, though we had no way of knowing if it was just the frigid night air or the promise of a Visitor. The stair ended in one of the small, circular rooms of the fortress’s many towers, and I flicked on my torch to its lowest setting – something else I wouldn’t normally do, but it was so dark up here we couldn’t even see which way to go, and I didn’t fancy spending the next two hours blindly crashing into things. I saw Kipps slide his goggles down over his eyes, and Skull materialized beside me. A quick scan of the room, both with mortal senses and our Talents, revealed nothing, and so we moved on.

Kipps, Skull, and I continued on in this manner, the glow of Skull’s green Other-light bright enough that I could turn off my torch. Other than a growing sense of unease, we saw and felt almost nothing for over half an hour. That unease spiked significantly about a quarter of the way around the path; when we checked the map, we realized it was because we were quite close to both the prisoners’ tower and the site of those seven famous executions. I also started hearing fragments of whispers, but they were far away and faint, and they didn’t change much as we continued along. I popped in a stick of gum to help with the miasma, feeling slightly better as the familiar minty flavor washed over my tongue. I never dropped my guard, though – after all George had told us about the Tower, the fact that we’d basically seen nothing so far was more than a little unnerving.

We made it all the way to the other side of the fortress before anything more significant finally happened.

“Wait,” I murmured, holding out a hand to stop Kipps. I closed my eyes and Listened.

_“Help…help us, please…”_

“Skull, do you hear that?” I asked, glancing at the floating young man at my side. He nodded.

_“Yup. Seems like we’ve finally found our ghost.”_

“But which one?” I wondered. I relayed our quick conversation to Kipps, who agreed that we might’ve actually found something this time.

_“Help, please help…”_

“It…it sounds like a child,” I said hesitantly. “The echo, that is.”

“The princes of the Tower, maybe?” Kipps suggested. “But weren’t their remains found in the White Tower?”

“The evidence wasn’t conclusive, remember?” I reminded him. “The box of bones they dug up in the White Tower did belong to children, but they never confirmed _which_ children, and even if they had, most of the bones were missing. Plus, some of the stories say the princes were _originally_ buried at the foot of the stairs in the White Tower, but later secretly moved somewhere else, and only those who’d done it knew where. If _that’s_ the case, I’d be willing to bet they’re still here.”

_“I’d second that,”_ Skull said. _“Definitely the princes.”_

“At any rate, they’re the only children we know of who were actually _imprisoned_ here, so it’s as good a guess as any,” I finished. “But the question is…where are they?”

“A very good question indeed,” Kipps said. “If they weren’t killed in these passageways, we won’t see a death glow, and depending on the manifestation, we might not see much of that, either.”

“Oh Jesus, _please_ not another poltergeist,” I muttered. We’d had more than enough of _that_ at Aickmere’s, thank you very much. Kipps shuddered – I suspected his thoughts were along the same lines as mine. Even Skull didn’t say anything – he wasn’t particularly fond of the Aickmere’s debacle either, as it had led to my (temporary) resignation from Lockwood and Co. (He’d finally admitted that as much as the others annoyed him, it wasn’t nearly as much fun to tease and pester me when I wasn’t at my best, and I’d been all sorts of off kilter during my entire free agency stint. Besides, he found it hilarious to see how many shades of red I could turn when he trapped me into horribly embarrassing one-sided conversations in front of the others. Bastard.)

“Let’s keep going,” Kipps said then. “We’ll do a scan in the next room.”

The next room seemed exceptionally cold, and I wished for the first time that we’d been keeping track of the temperature. Was this noticeable difference worth paying attention to, or had the temperature been fluctuating the entire time? Was it colder just because it had gotten later, or was there a Visitor nearby? We had no way of knowing. We proceeded with caution, scanning the room with our Talents. Kipps couldn’t See anything unusual, and the pleas for help continued but hadn’t seemed to change much. The sudden chill, though, had me on edge, and so I decided to employ the final Talent, Touch. Slowly, carefully, I removed my glove and crouched to the floor.

_“Watch it!”_ Skull’s shout came just before my fingers made contact with the dark stone, and I hurled myself out of the way just as a Visitor burst through the floor. It was indeed a child, perhaps ten years old or so, with wavy, shoulder-length hair and dressed in a tunic and tights. For a long moment, it said and did nothing, just stared at us with large, blinking eyes.

_“Help us,”_ it whispered, and then, without warning, it let out a long, piercing scream, so loud that I shrieked in pain and fell to the floor, clutching my head. Kipps didn’t hear it, of course, but he must’ve heard me, because he leapt forward, rapier in hand, and engaged the ghost. The child shrieked again and flew at Kipps, Skull buffeting him out of harm’s way with a powerful burst of wind. I recovered enough to hurl a salt bomb at the Visitor, but upon impact, it shrieked a third time, and I nearly crumpled again. As a Listener, Screaming Spirits were some of my least favorite Visitors by design, and this was definitely one of the loudest I’d ever encountered.

_“Not very nice, this one,”_ Skull commented. _“I think it’s time we taught him a lesson.”_ With that, Skull summoned a whirlwind; the Visitor, confused by the unexpected chaos, paused, and it was enough for Kipps to run him through with his rapier, the spirit exploding in a splash of ectoplasm. We were under no delusions that it was gone, but we’d bought some time.

Or at least, we thought we had. No sooner had we breathed a sigh of relief than the fog left behind when the ectoplasm melted start to swirl, signaling that the Visitor was already re-forming. At the same moment, Skull looked at me and said, _“Lucy, you need to go – now.”_

“What?” I said, not taking my eyes off the fog. “The spirit’s reforming, _right now,_ and you want me to _leave?_ You’ve said a lot of unhelpful things on cases, Skull, but that one tops-” I stopped speaking then, because Skull had moved close enough to cast me in his greenish glow, and I could now see both his uncharacteristically concerned expression and the fact that the fingers on my right hand, exposed ever since I’d removed my glove to use my Touch, were decidedly darker than they should’ve been. Evidently, I’d been just that bit too slow to react to Skull’s warning. I’d been ghost-touched.

“Oh, God,” I murmured, staring in horror at my hand. The blue had only made it to my first knuckles, but I knew that meant nothing. A ghost-touched agent didn’t have much more than twenty minutes or so before it started doing some serious damage – I remembered all too well how long it had taken Lockwood to heal properly after the disaster at Sheen Road – and every agent was different. Some could wait for up to an hour before it got really bad, while others were lucky to get ten minutes. I’d never been ghost-touched before, so I had no idea where I fell on that spectrum, and I was terrified. How long had it been since the Visitor first appeared? Five minutes? More? The DEPRAC medics were waiting just at the Tower entrance, but how far were we from there?

“Jesus, Lucy, get out of here!” Kipps cried when he saw my hand.

“I can’t just leave you!” I protested. Already, the spirit was almost fully re-formed. “You’ve only got the goggles, you need help!”

“Lucy, YOU haven’t got TIME!” Kipps shouted back. “That’s got to be treated, now! You _know_ it’s deadly, and I, for one, am NOT going to explain to Lockwood that YOU died because you were too damn stubborn to go for help! Now, get the hell out of here!” I knew he was being serious when he actually called Lockwood by his surname – Kipps almost always called Lockwood ‘Tony’, which drove him absolutely mad. Hearing Lockwood’s name also made my heart wrench, and I knew Kipps was right. I still remembered the horrible feeling that weighed on me when the Fetch convinced me that Lockwood was dead, and I couldn’t put him through that, especially not for real.

“Alright, I’ll go,” I said quietly. “But will you…”

_“I’ll stay with him,”_ Skull cut in. _“I’ll get us out of here.”_ He looked completely serious, and it was a mark of how much my relationship with Skull had changed that I trusted that he was actually _being_ sincere as well.

“Thank you,” I choked, suddenly emotional. “I…I’ll see you both soon.” Kipps hardly heard me, as he was already raising his sword at the Visitor again, and Skull was glowing brighter, no doubt bracing for his own onslaught. I tried to reach for one last salt bomb – I couldn’t just not help them! – but my fingers, already swelling, were clumsy, and all I did was drop the canister, where it shattered at my feet and coated my boots with its contents. Swallowing another sob, I turned and bolted from the room.

I don’t know how long I ran, only that I ran faster than I’d ever run before. Now that I’d left Kipps, Skull, and the Visitor behind, full-on panic had set in, and I hurtled around corners and up and down passages as fast as I could, hoping against hope that I was actually going in the right direction. I neither met nor heard any other Visitors, and I was surprised but thankful that I hadn’t yet crashed into anything. My luck had to run out eventually, though, and, blind as I was without the aid of my torch (my good hand still held my rapier, and the other obviously wasn’t much good for anything at the moment), I didn’t see the short set of steps leading into the next room, and I tripped, tumbling down them to land in a heap in the middle of the floor. Groaning in pain, I’d just pulled myself to my feet when a glow appeared in my exit door. It was a Visitor – by the looks of it, the other of the two murdered princes.

I’ll admit it – the next moment wasn’t my finest. In my defense, I was exhausted, I was terrified, I could _feel_ my fingers stiffening, my knees were scraped and bleeding, my hip hurt from where I’d landed awkwardly on something in my belt, and I knew I wasn’t in any state to battle this ghost. So, I did the only thing I could think of to do: I screamed as loud as I could. My scream, of course, only agitated the Visitor, which screamed in turn before flying into the room. I rolled out of the way and kept it at bay with a ward knot, then temporarily set my rapier down to reach for a flare. I wasn’t used to throwing with that arm, though, and while I was fairly on target, the flare didn’t do nearly as much damage as it should have. Making a mental note to tell Lockwood we really should train ourselves to be as ambidextrous as possible, I abandoned the thought of fighting with more than one weapon and grasped my rapier again, getting shakily to my feet.

“Come and get me, I dare you!” I all but shouted, baring my teeth at the Visitor. I was _beyond_ done with all of this shite.

To my surprise, something ripped through the Visitor’s torso. I caught the familiar gleam of a rapier blade, and I nearly dropped my own when I realized who was wielding it.

It was Flo Bones.

“That you who screamed? Thought so,” she said conversationally, turning to face the Visitor again. Then she went to work.

Now, Lockwood is good with a blade – _very_ good, in fact, one of the best I’ve ever seen. Graceful though he was, he looked like a child clumsily testing his first sword next to Flo. Flo had once bested Lockwood in a fencing competition, and seeing her in action, I could understand why. She moved as if through water, every step flowing seamlessly into the next, her sword twirling so fast, the blade was a blur. It was a sight to behold. My muddled brain belatedly wondered how long it had been since Flo had seriously wielded a sword – she’d once been an agent too, but after a terrible case that left her entire team dead and her battling two particularly vicious spirits alone until dawn, she’d hung up her iron chains and turned to relic-hunting. If she was this good after so long, I could only imagine the swordswoman she’d been in her prime.

…did I mention she was doing all of this in her usual straw hat and oversized Wellies? Just witnessing the fight should’ve disqualified me from ever wielding a sword again – Flo Bones is a _legend._

“Could use some help here, ya know!” Flo hollered just then. “Locky thinks you’re good for sumthin’, and this arm’s not what it used to be!” Not what it used to be? Good Lord!

“I won’t be good for anything much longer!” I shouted back as I fumbled with another flare. “I’ve been ghost-touched, Flo!” She didn’t turn my way, but I saw her stiffen.

“Damn,” she said. “That’s no good. Can’t be passing _that_ news on to dear Locky, ooooh, no.” With that, she began to fight even harder, her sword flying, until she finally managed to get a direct strike. The Visitor shattered into a million pieces, leaving nothing but a puddle of ectoplasm behind.

“Let’s get outta here,” she said, and bolted out the door, me following close behind. We raced down the passage as fast as we could, but I was on my last legs by then, and this time when I stumbled and fell, I had a much harder time getting back up.

“No time for that,” Flo declared, and without another word, she threw me over her shoulder in a fireman’s hold and took off running again. She was, evidently, almost unbelievably strong, as I probably weighed at least what she did even without all my equipment, and yet she ran as if she did this sort of thing every day, rapier still in hand and poised to strike.

“Visitor!” I warned as we hurtled through yet another tower room. The ghost Flo had shredded to bits had re-formed just like its brother and had caught up to us.

“I’m aware!” Flo snapped back. She raced down another passageway and through another room, the ghost in hot pursuit. Upon reaching the other side, we tumbled down a flight of steps and into open air – somehow, Flo had gotten us out of the passages, and we were back where Kipps and I had started.

I lay on my back, my body aching all over, and watched as Flo turned to face the Visitor.

“Don’t even think about it,” she snarled, raising her blade. The Visitor shrieked, and I winced as searing pain shot through my head yet again. I had a horrible headache, and my vision was starting to blur. I felt someone fumbling at my belt but couldn’t muster the energy to find out who or why.

The last thing I saw before I blacked out was the bright blast of a magnesium flare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we've got Skull being fresh (I totally agree with his biscuit rule comment), Lucy and Kipps being friends, some ghost-touch, and Flo being an absolute badass - and we're only halfway through night one at the Tower! Stay tuned... :)


	9. Chapter 9

The first thing I noticed upon waking was the pounding in my skull. The second, a smell like the wrong end of a sewer.

“You owe me some serious licorice, Carlyle.” I groaned and sat up. Gradually, the pounding ceased, my vision cleared, and the shape of Flo Bones came into view.

“Hey, Flo,” I said groggily. “What…what happened?”

“You got ghost-touched, s’what happened,” Flo replied. “You remember that, dontcha?” I nodded.

“Yeah, I remember that. And I remember running, and you fighting the ghost, and the flare. Nothing after that, though.” As much as I wanted to, I left out how much I wanted to gush over her rapier skills – Flo might’ve come to my rescue, but her agency days were a sore spot, I knew, and I didn’t want to remind her of those terrible memories.

“Brought you here, didn’t I?” Flo said. “Wasn’t about to have to tell Locky that you’d died from ghost-touch, ooooh, no. And you were in no state to get here yourself, that’s for sure.” I looked around properly for the first time since waking and noticed I was sitting on what seemed to be a gurney in one of the DEPRAC vans. Out the van’s open rear door, I could see the Tower’s outer wall. My right hand was heavily bandaged, the arm in a sling, and I could tell that it was swollen, most likely from a combination of the ghost-touch itself and the injection used to treat it. My bleeding knees had also been cleaned and bandaged.

“Flo, you saved my life,” I said seriously. “I owe you far more than licorice.” Flo waved it off.

“Make it the good stuff, and we’ll call it even,” she said dismissively. “Locky’ll pay for it, I’m sure.” No doubt he _would_ pay for it, knowing that Flo was the reason I was still alive. At the mention of Lockwood, though, I suddenly sat up straight.

“Flo, what time is it?” I demanded. “How long have I been here?”

“You’ve been out of it for about half an hour, I’d guess,” Flo replied. “Don’t really know.” I jumped off the gurney, my eyes searching for my rapier, work belt, and backpack.

“Just there,” Flo said, correctly guessing what I’d been looking for and nodding in the direction of my things. I quickly strapped on my belt and was about to pick up my rapier when another voice stopped me.

“Just where do you think you’re going?” It was a DEPRAC medic, one who’d presumably been tending to my injuries. He looked to be about fifteen or twenty years older than I was. I didn’t know his name.

“I have work to do,” I said, picking up my sword and clumsily shouldering my bag as best I could.

“Ms. Carlyle, you were ghost-touched less than an hour ago!” the medic exclaimed. “You’re not cleared to leave yet!”

“Oh, to hell with that!” I told him. “My team is still in there” – I gestured toward the Tower – “my sword arm is perfectly fine, and judging by what I’ve seen tonight, they need all the help they can get. I’m going back in. Now, get out of my way, or I will _make_ you move.”

“I’d listen to her,” yet another voice chimed in, sounding amused. The speaker rounded the back of the van, and Angie came into view.

“She’s going to go whether you want her to or not, Marcus,” Angie said. The medic – Marcus, evidently – sighed deeply.

“Agents,” he muttered, shaking his head. He looked at me. “Fine – you may go. But you _must_ report back to me once you’re done here tonight, Ms. Carlyle. Ghost-touch is serious business, and we’ll need to reassess the injury as soon as possible. Do try not to aggravate it.”

“No promises,” I said as I hopped out of the van. “Thanks very much.” I turned to Flo. “Thanks again for saving me, Flo. I don’t even know why you’re here at all, but I appreciate it.” She chuckled.

“Don’t mention it,” she said. “Heard all about this one from George and thought I’d hang round just in case. Always sumthin’ goin’ wrong with you lot.” She grinned then. Go get ‘em, girl.” I grinned back.

“Will do.” And with that, I took off running, heading back to the Tower entrance.

Having been sealed off in the walkways for the last two hours, I really had no idea what was going on in the rest of the Tower, nor how the rest of the team was faring. Upon reentering the complex, then, I was quite relieved to see that, apart from a patch of lawn a little ways off that seemed to be smoking, everything appeared to be fairly calm. A few of the other pairs were standing inside the enormous iron circle that contained our extra supplies – it seemed I’d returned just in time for the two-hour rendezvous. As I approached the circle, I could hear Kipps telling the others about the two Visitors we’d encountered.

“I could tell poor Lucy was in a bad way, they must’ve been shrieking something awful…”

“They certainly were,” I said. Kipps turned to see me standing just outside the circle.

“Lucy!” he cried. “Oh, thank heavens you’re alright! I was just telling everyone about the princes.”

“Did you see the other one too, then?” I asked as I joined the others in the circle and made for the kettle. I snickered to myself when I noticed that Kat Godwin was among those holding a mug, then prepared my own cup. I sighed as the hot liquid ran down my throat – it was bloody _cold_ out here, and I’d been cursing myself all night for not thinking to bring a Thermos like Martin had done. Still, a mug every so often was loads better than no tea at all.

“I did,” Kipps replied as he sipped his own drink. “Had a devil of a time getting out of there, and I still haven’t the faintest idea what their Source could be.” I knew he was leaving out whatever Skull’s role in the story had been – I’d have to ask him later. Skull himself had vanished, most likely back to his own Source until it was safe to reappear. Minus a few scrapes and bruises, Kipps seemed unharmed, and I was glad for it. I would’ve felt awful if he’d been seriously hurt after I’d left, ghost-touch or no ghost-touch. I raised the mug to my lips for another sip, then frowned.

“Where are the others?” I asked, looking around at my assembled teammates. Kipps, Kat, and Bobby were there, as were the two pairs that had been patrolling the grounds, but neither George and Keith nor Lockwood and Oliver were there.

“We haven’t seen them yet,” Holly said, a matching frown on her own face. “I do hope they’re alright.” As if in answer to her thought, four figures came sprinting across the dark lawn, one pair moving rather faster than the other. Lockwood and Keith reached us first, George and Oliver panting behind them – George had been struggling to keep up with Lockwood and Keith’s much longer legs, and Oliver, we saw, was bleeding steadily from a gash in his right arm. Holly immediately offered to take him to the DEPRAC medics, and they hurried away as quickly as Oliver, whose face was rather white, could go.

“We’re definitely going to need all hands on deck for this one,” Lockwood said once his breathing had evened out a bit. “We’ve got three _very_ powerful Visitors in the chapel – I suspect it’s the three queens.” Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey had all been buried in the chapel following their executions.

“There’s a Changer in the White Tower,” Keith added, still panting a bit. “George and I haven’t found the Source yet, and whoever it is, they’re not too pleased we’re here.”

“I’ll help with the chapel,” I said at once. Not only were Changers a right pain in the arse to destroy, I never got much out of them in terms of echoes, so my Talent wouldn’t be much good.

“My God, Luce, but you’re hurt!” Lockwood exclaimed, noticing my bandaged arm for the first time. “Are you sure-” I whipped out my sword and pointed it at him.

“Anthony John Lockwood, I love you, but so help me God, if you try to make me sit this one out, I swear I’ll run you through with this rapier,” I growled. Someone – I think it was George – snorted, and Keith whistled lowly.

“Fiery one, she is,” he commented, staring at me with an expression that suggested he was wondering if I might be about to stab _him_ with my sword, too. Lockwood threw back his head and laughed.

“That’s my Luce,” he said, his eyes sparkling with mirth as they met mine. My face flushed a little, but I didn’t mind – it was dark, for one, so nobody could see it, and for another, it was a pleased sort of embarrassment. I shook my head fondly and lowered my rapier.

“Kipps, why don’t you come with us, then,” Lockwood suggested, “and Emma, since Holly’s gone off with Oliver, perhaps you might help George and Keith? Excellent. The rest of you, keep watching the grounds for now, but stay close just in case.” We agreed that this course of action was as good as any, replenished our supplies and downed the last of our tea, and set off.

The Chapel Royal of Saint Peter ad Vincula stood in the far corner of the Tower complex, just beyond the infamous Tower Green, upon which those executed within the Tower itself had met their ends. From the outside, it rather resembled a shoebox – not particularly tall, and rectangular in shape – and it was on the smaller side for a church. A much taller structure, presumably the bell tower, stuck up at the back. Inside, large windows offered a bit of light, and instead of pews, rows of wooden chairs filled the church. Floor-to-ceiling columns supporting decorative arches marched down the center of the room every five rows or so, and large square tiles covered the floor, across which pieces of something I couldn’t identify lay scattered. Interestingly, the altar was not front and center, but off to the side, in the far-right corner of the room; its leftmost counterpart was home to a stately pipe organ. A circle of iron chains, presumably leftover from Lockwood and Oliver’s original reconnaissance, sat just inside the entrance. Lockwood, Kipps, and I all found space within the circle.

 _“Cozy,”_ Skull commented, glancing around. He’d materialized as soon as we’d entered the chapel so as to avoid the chains.

“Tell us what you saw earlier,” I said to Lockwood, taking care to keep my voice low. If these Visitors were as powerful as he’d said, I wasn’t about to call their attention to us before we were ready.

“Well, no death glows, of course, because none of them died in here,” Lockwood began. “Incidentally, did you know that there are far more than just three people buried in here, and virtually all of them were executed? Fascinating, that.”

“Lockwood…” I said exasperatedly. Lockwood cleared his throat.

“Well, yes, I suppose the potential for even _more_ angry spirits isn’t very nice, is it?” he admitted sheepishly. “And the three we saw are definitely angry. See those bits on the floor there? That was a chandelier until recently; one of the spirits tried to drop it on us and it smashed everywhere. One of the larger pieces gave Oliver that lovely gash on his arm.” He then added, “Anyway, our three Visitors materialized over there” – he pointed towards the far corner, where the altar stood – “and…well, we _think_ they’re women, at any rate.”

 _“What does he mean he_ thinks _they’re women? Surely even he’s not_ that _oblivious. Women have_ curves _, my friend!”_ Skull waggled his eyebrows and smirked lasciviously – not for the first time, I wished he was still in the jar so I could turn him off.

“Erm…care to explain?” Kipps asked. (He sounded as confused as Skull, but at least he was polite about it.)

“Well…” Lockwood trailed off, as if unsure of how to answer Kipps’ question. At last, he sighed and said, “They don’t have heads – or at least, two of them don’t – and their clothes are rather shapeless. The third has its head under its arm – it’s got long hair and decidedly feminine features, so we at least know she’s female, and if she’s one of the queens, it’s as good a guess as any that her companions are the other two.” Kipps shrugged.

“Fair enough, I suppose. So, what are we – oh, bloody _hell!”_

I might’ve scolded Kipps for swearing in a church if I hadn’t been thinking the exact same thing. The Specters were so bright, even I had no trouble picking out all their details. Like Lockwood had said, the middle one carried her head under her arm while the other two were missing theirs entirely. Their necks ended in bloody stumps, though the formless shifts they wore were an unblemished white, and their hands and feet were bare. From George’s many lectures about the Tower’s prisoners, I recalled that the condemned were stripped of their valuables before their deaths, and their clothes were often given to their executioners as a macabre sort of payment. The bodies were then buried in rather narrow boxes not initially intended for use as coffins, which required simple burial garments so the remains would fit. The clothes they’d worn to their deaths had probably been stained with blood, but I supposed if they’d largely bled out before being buried, the shifts would’ve stayed reasonably clean. Regardless of what they wore or how bloody they were, I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with these three.

 _“Find them…”_ The bone-chilling whisper sent shivers up my spine, especially since I couldn’t even tell which of the ghosts had spoken. Hearing Visitors didn’t usually bother me all that much (it was what came after that tended to be far worse), but this? This was unnerving.

“Do you Hear anything, Luce?” Lockwood asked. I nodded.

“Yeah. One of them wants us to find something – I don’t know what, though, and I don’t even know which one of them said it.”

“And we already know they’re not afraid to throw things at us,” Kipps added, “which doesn’t exactly help if we’re to find…whatever it is. Brilliant.”

“Oliver and I didn’t find anything noteworthy,” Lockwood told us. He kept his eyes on the Visitors as we spoke. “In that corner where they’re standing are markers telling who’s buried where, but that’s about it.”

“Did they seem particularly protective of that spot?” I wondered. “Is it possible whatever we’re looking for is buried with them?”

“I don’t think so,” Lockwood said, shaking his head. “Especially not after what you’ve just heard. It sounds like these three are missing whatever it is and very much _want_ us to find it, even if they’re not going to make it easy.”

 _“Bloody aristocrats,”_ Skull muttered. _“Always swanning about as if they own the place and expecting the common folk to do everything for them.”_

“You could help us, you know,” I commented. Skull shrugged.

 _“I could, yes, but it’s loads more fun to watch you blundering about. Besides, I don’t know what we’re after, either. Ooooh, she looks mad.”_ I turned my attention back to the Visitors. I assumed Skull meant the one with the head – did a ghost without one really _have_ a way to look mad? – and saw that all three were slowly but surely drifting forward, and the first few rows of wooden chairs were rattling ominously against the tiled floor.

“Be ready,” Lockwood warned us. From beside me, I heard him draw his rapier, his boots shuffling on the floor as he took up a defensive stance. “Round One wasn’t pretty, and I’m sure they’ll turn it up a notch for Round Two.”

“Duly noted,” I grumbled, lifting my own blade. Kipps did the same, and the three of us waited with bated breath. The Visitors split up, two drifting down the aisles while the third floated over the central row of chairs. When they’d halved the distance between us, one of them spoke again.

 _“Where are they? WHERE. ARE. THEY?”_ This last question was practically a shout, and the rattling chairs abruptly moved, rising sharply into the air before flying in all directions. Many crashed into the walls, and one flew straight into one of the enormous windows, shattering the glass and sending sharp shards raining down across the back corner of the chapel. The most pressing were the ones that flew directly at our heads, forcing us to scatter to avoid being hit. The ghosts had successfully kicked us out of the iron circle.

 _“WHERE ARE THEY?”_ the Visitor shrieked again. _“FIND THEM!”_

 _“Yup, definitely sounds like a queen to me,”_ Skull said.

“Not helpful!” I snapped. The nearest Visitor, one of the completely headless ones, was just a few feet away, so I drew up my sword and attacked with one of the more complex ward knots I knew. Ectoplasm flew as I nicked one of its hands, but I hadn’t done nearly enough damage to make her disappear. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Lockwood and Kipps locked in combat with their own Visitors. The smell of salt filled my nose as a canister burst nearby, and one of the ghosts shrieked in pain. Taking a chance, I tossed my rapier to my other hand and grabbed a flare from my belt, hurling it at the Visitor with all my strength. The good news: it smashed and coated her in Greek fire, and she disappeared in a shower of ectoplasm and the echo of a lingering scream. The bad news: sparks fell on several of the chairs that hadn’t already taken flight, and they were soon up in flames. Oops. The chaplains weren’t going to be too thrilled about that. Oh well – at least when it came to destroying the place, we could honestly say we hadn’t started it this time.

 _“FIND. THEM!”_ Another shriek, this one loud enough that I wanted to cover my already-ringing ears. First the princes, now the queens…I was going to be completely deaf by morning, if we managed to get out of here at all.

“Lockwood!” I shouted. “This isn’t working! We need a Plan B!”

“Already tried Plan B, Luce!” He called back. “Plans C and D, too. Didn’t go so well!”

“You know what I mean, you bastard!” My Visitor had reappeared, and I fended her off with another ward knot, although in my haste I didn’t execute it all that well, so it didn’t do much good. “We need a _different_ plan!”

“Agreed!” came Kipps’ voice from somewhere in the chaos. The chairs in the right column were all burning steadily now – I couldn’t see him through all the smoke. I realized with horror that I couldn’t see the exit, either.

“Where’s the door?” I shouted. “We need to get out of here!” The Visitors were still screaming at us to find whatever it was they’d lost, but we’d never find _anything_ at this rate, and I didn’t fancy being burnt to a crisp, either.

 _“Oh, HELL no!”_ All of a sudden, a fierce wind buffeted every inch of the chapel. I dropped to the ground and covered my head as bits of burning chairs, shards of broken glass, and other debris whirled through the air. The makeshift hurricane rapidly expanded until, with another burst of wind, everything in it shot across the room, blowing the Visitors back towards the altar. They screamed and tried their best to rush us again, but the wind was too powerful.

 _“What are you waiting for? Get out of here!”_ It took me a second to realize that Skull was the one causing the hurricane, holding the three queens at bay just as he’d done Ezekiel and Marissa Fittes. The hurricane was so powerful that the smoke had cleared and the fires all but extinguished. I caught sight of the door and jumped to my feet.

“Lockwood!” I cried. “Kipps! RUN!” The boys didn’t need telling twice, and we raced for the exit as fast as we could. We hurtled across the lawn, our eyes smarting at the sudden loss of light. Lockwood whistled loudly and began calling for the others.

“We’re leaving, now!” he shouted as we ran. The two teams in the grounds stopped in confusion at first but seemed to get the memo when they heard the noise echoing from the chapel. Even if they couldn’t hear the Visitors’ screams, the roar of the hurricane was almost deafening.

“Don’t bother with the equipment, we’ll come back for it!” Lockwood continued, still running. “We’re not taking any chances!” We detoured only slightly so we could grab George, Keith, and Emma (by chance, they’d just come out of the White Tower, so we didn’t have to go very far), then hurried out of the Tower complex to sprawl, panting, on the pavement beside the DEPRAC vans.

“Jesus!” Angie cried as she spotted us. “Are you alright?” From inside the Tower, we heard what sounded like a small explosion. “Do I want to know what that was?”

“Probably couldn’t tell you even if we knew,” I said, groaning as I struggled to sit up. I’d been thrown around (and thrown myself around) more times tonight than I had in the last few months, at least. On top of being deaf in the morning, I was also going to be one big bruise. “Things kind of went to hell in there, Ange. We’re going to have to call this for tonight and come back.”

“I’m surprised any of you are still standing,” Angie replied. “It’s well after two in the morning.”

Good lord. When was the last time I’d been up so late on a wintertime case? The sun set so early that even the more difficult cases were usually wrapped up by midnight. At the rate we were going, it would be pushing sunrise by the time we returned to Portland Row – even now, the DEPRAC medics were insisting on checking us over before letting us leave. I submitted to their poking and prodding, mostly because I was too tired to protest. The sooner they finished, the sooner we could go home. Marcus, the medic who’d treated my ghost-touch, wasn’t exactly pleased to hear I’d been fighting again, but I hadn’t caused any further damage and the injection had done its work, so he begrudgingly re-wrapped my arm, cleaned a few errant scrapes I’d acquired in our battle with the queens, gave me some water for my aching throat, and sent me on my way. Oliver was our only other serious casualty that night, and since he’d already been treated, the medics made quick work of the rest of us. All the same, it felt like forever before we were finally piling into cabs and heading home, and Lockwood, George, and I all but dragged ourselves up the front steps and into the house.

 _“Welcome home. It’s about time you got back.”_ I poked my head into the sitting room to see Skull stretched out on the sofa.

“Like you didn’t just get home yourself,” I retorted, suppressing a yawn. I deliberately avoided looking at the clock. “You may be a Type Three, but you still can’t go all that far from your Source, and it’s been in my bag this whole time.”

_“Pssht. I’ll have you know I beat you by three whole blocks. And you’re welcome, by the way.”_

“For what?”

_“Uh, for saving your sorry arse yet again? Did that ghost damage your brain as well as your arm? Honestly.”_

“Is that what you call it?” I asked. “You didn’t do a damn thing while we were trapped in all that fire!”

_“I did say it was fun to watch you muck everything up, you know.”_

“You’re unbelievable. So you were having too much fun watching us die – what changed your mind?”

 _“She went for the organ.”_ I paused, unsure if I’d heard him correctly.

“I’m sorry – _what?”_

 _“I_ said _, she went for the organ. I suppose I can forgive you that one, seeing as you’re practically deaf now, but seriously, do keep up. The one who still had her head made for the pipe organ, and I could tell she intended to blow it up and use it as another weapon. Well, I wasn’t about to let_ that _happen. I’ll bet you anything that one’s Anne Boleyn – only a witch would smash a musical instrument.”_ I gaped at Skull in disbelief.

“Anne Boleyn wasn’t really a witch, but leaving that aside…are you _serious_ right now?”

 _“Of course I am,”_ Skull said with a disdainful little sniff. _“I happen to quite like music, thanks very much.”_ I couldn’t even think of a response to that – I just continued to stare at him and shake my head.

“Unbelievable,” I finally said. “Un- _believable.”_ Skull huffed again.

 _“Just because_ you _don’t appreciate the finer things in life-”_

“Oh, my GOD. I give up, I’m going to bed. I’d _so_ put you in the jar for this if I could.” I started to haul myself up the stairs.

 _“No, you wouldn’t – you like me too much,”_ Skull replied smugly once I’d reached the top.

“You just keep on thinking that!” I called back, disappearing up the steps to my attic bedroom.

I could still hear Skull cackling with glee downstairs when I crawled into bed five minutes later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love so many things about this chapter...hope you enjoyed! Until next time. :)


	10. Part Four: We Three Queens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to the Tower we go! Skull is on a roll...

I slept soundly for once, but I was so exhausted that I didn’t rise until well past noon. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d had a bit of a lie-in, either – when I dragged myself into the kitchen for some breakfast, George only managed a mumbled “Morning” before yawning and reaching for another sip of tea, and Lockwood stumbled in a few moments later, seemingly still half asleep. None of us had bothered to change out of our pajamas, and conversation was kept to a minimum until we all sat around the table with steaming mugs of tea and plates of eggs and bacon.

“Last night was something else, eh?” Lockwood said as he forked another bite of eggs.

“If by ‘something else’, you mean ‘an absolute disaster’, then sure,” I replied.

“Oh, come now, Luce, I wouldn’t go as far as all that. Nobody died, we didn’t do any permanent damage, and we’ve at least got an idea of what we need to do next. None of those things spell ‘absolute disaster’.”

“And we’re down a ghost, too,” George added. “We found the Source for the Changer, so the White Tower is clear now. We left it with the DEPRAC team last night.”

“Brilliant!” Lockwood said. “See, Luce? Have a little optimism.” I laughed.

“Alright, alright. Fair enough.”

“What exactly happened to you last night, Lucy?” Lockwood asked, shifting his gaze to my bandaged arm. I flexed the arm in question, which was rather stiff and still a little swollen. I’d forgotten that neither George nor Lockwood had been there for Kipps’ tale the previous night.

“One of the princes took us by surprise,” I explained. “Popped right through the floor, and I didn’t quite manage to get out of the way in time. Skull was the one who told me I’d been ghost-touched – he actually tried to warn me as well, I think he sensed the other spirit just before it appeared – and he offered to stay with Kipps while I went off for help.”

“You mean he actually did something good for once?” George asked incredulously.

“Oh, he more than made up for it by letting us almost burn to death in the chapel before bothering to help,” I replied with a snort. “Anyway, I hurried along as best I could, and…well, I was scared, to be honest. I didn’t know how far I was from the exit staircase or how much time I had left. And then I ran into the other prince – I thought I was done for, I really did. But you’ll never guess who showed up just then.”

“Who?”

“Flo.”

“Flo Bones? Really?” Lockwood looked both interested and confused. “What happened? And what was she doing there, anyway?”

“Well, that last bit’s because of me, I think,” George said. “I told her all about the case, so she knew we’d be there last night.” I nodded in agreement.

“That’s right – that’s exactly what she told me, after I woke up in the DEPRAC van. She said she’d decided to hang around the area just in case. Anyway, she must’ve heard me scream – I was so done with the ghost and just couldn’t handle it anymore – because there she was, rapier and all.”

“She had a _rapier?”_ Now Lockwood was _really_ interested. “This I have to hear.”

“She did, and my God, Lockwood, I know you’ve told us before that she’s good, but hearing about it and actually seeing it are two different things. She’s _incredible._ She singlehandedly fought off the second prince long enough for us to get away, and even though it kept reappearing, she kept it at bay and got us out of the passageways altogether. Then she blew up the prince with a magnesium flare and got me to DEPRAC.” Lockwood whistled.

“So, what it boils down to is she saved your life,” he said softly. “I’ll have to thank her for that.” He reached over and squeezed my bandaged hand, his fingers trembling slightly in my own. I didn’t blame him for being afraid. Starry-eyed rookie or seasoned professional, ghost-touch didn’t discriminate. Once infected, it became a race against time – and if the Visitor was too strong or touched too close to the heart or lungs, there might not be any time at all. It was one of the biggest hazards of being an agent, one of the most likely ways for an agent to die. As for the three of us, we were more than just coworkers, we were family, and the only family Lockwood had left. Of course he’d be scared to lose us.

“She already told me that loads of licorice will more than suffice, as long as it’s the good stuff,” I said as I returned the squeeze as much as my swollen fingers would allow. Lockwood smiled slightly at that.

“Alright, then. Loads of licorice it is.” The tension broken for now, we settled back to enjoy the rest of our food.

After breakfast, it was back to work. Now that we had a better idea as to the remaining Visitors’ identities, George bustled off to the Archives to see if he could dig up anything else about them. Lockwood spent what seemed like ages on the phone with the rest of our team, organizing another team meeting, asking around about supplies, and doing half a dozen other things. I spent the time polishing rapiers and restocking work belts, although the latter was a tad difficult given that we’d left most of our things at the Tower. Once he’d got off the phone, Lockwood and I headed down to the basement for some rapier practice. We sparred against each other instead of the dummies, and though he beat me every time, especially with my bandaged arm messing with my balance, it was still great fun.

The next morning found our team at the Tower once more, this time for another surveillance mission. We knew we were on the hunt for at least two more Sources – that of the princes, and that of the queens – and we wanted to be as prepared as possible. Not only could we actually see where we were going, but it was warming up during the day just enough that we should be able to detect unusually cold spots. Attempting to actually retrieve the Sources during the day would be pointless – we didn’t know what we were looking for, and we wouldn’t know if anything we found was a Source or not without coming back at night to see if the Visitors had gone – but having an idea of where to look would be a good start.

“Let’s split into pairs again,” Lockwood directed. “We’re pretty sure the White Tower’s been cleared – one team should sweep it just in case, but we’ll focus our attention on the chapel, the outer walkways, and the grounds. Since the grounds are the largest, let’s have three pairs there – George, you and Keith can join the other two groups after you’ve checked the White Tower – then two in the walkways, and one in the chapel. That ought to do it.” This seemed a reasonable approach, so we split up and got to work. Kipps, Kat, Bobby, and I made quick work of the walkways. Having already spent a fair bit of time in there, Kipps and I had a good idea of where to focus our attentions, and our suspicions were correct – our readings were lowest in the room where we’d seen the first prince and on both of the larger staircases, although one was slightly colder than the other. This effectively cut down the location of the Source to somewhere in the last quarter of the walkway – still not exactly a small space, but loads better than having to comb the entire perimeter. Our work complete, we headed back outside to see how the others were faring.

The other teams had had mixed results. George and Keith declared the White Tower officially Visitor-free. Lockwood and Oliver went back to the chapel, but their findings were the same as before – the corner of the chapel containing the altar and the tombs was bitterly cold (not to mention piled high with the remnants of Skull’s hurricane), but there was nothing else of note. Unless we were wrong and the queens’ Source _was_ buried with them, it seemed it wasn’t in the chapel at all. The pairs roaming the grounds found a promising spot on Tower Green, though, especially when Lockwood confirmed there were several death glows hovering in the area, bright enough that he could faintly make them out even now. This must’ve been the exact spot for the executions, then. There were a few other cold spots across the lawn as well, but as they weren’t really all that close to Tower Green, we didn’t know what to make of them. We gathered all the supplies we’d left behind that first night, took a quick inventory, and stashed them neatly out of the way – no sense lugging them home yet when we were still coming back. A few last instructions from Lockwood, and we headed for home.

The following night, we returned for our second (and hopefully last) evening stint at the Tower. I’d made sure to pack a Thermos in my bag this time, and all of us were armed with all sorts of digging tools in addition to our usual ghost-hunting gear. Tonight was going to be both easier and more difficult than our first night – we’d narrowed down where to look, but now we’d have to hunt for Sources while keeping the Visitors at bay. Just like before, our DEPRAC friends were stationed just outside the Tower, just in case.

We created four iron circles this time, one in each corner of the grounds. Lockwood slipped on his sunglasses to have a look at the death glows on Tower Green – “Some of the brightest I’ve ever seen,” he declared them – but while we’d focus our efforts in that area, we still had to take care of the princes, as well as any other wayward Visitors we might’ve missed.

“How are we going to do this?” I asked as we huddled in the iron circle with our first mugs of tea. “Tackling them all at once seems suicidal, but we’ll be here all week if we try to find the Sources one at a time.”

“You were also the only Listener to encounter both of the strongest Visitors, Lucy,” Kipps added. “Kat, you’re a decent Listener too, of course, but you haven’t seen what those spirits can do. Do you feel prepared to help with one of them?”

“Well, I might not have a choice, if things get out of control once we start searching,” Kat said. “Carlyle can always fill me in on what the Visitors said, but you’re right in saying that how they act is an entirely different story.” She frowned and added, “Besides, the other night, Bobby and I found what we think is the spirit of Henry VI – he definitely died here, it might’ve been murder – and we thought we were making progress with finding his Source, too.”

“So if you’re already in the middle of that, you should continue,” Lockwood said with a frown. “Hmm…there are far too many important people already in the middle of things for my liking. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about it. For now, it sounds like we’ll have to hold off on tackling one of the strong Visitors while Lucy tackles the other and Kat takes care of dear Henry. I suppose the rest of us can either help with that or keep exploring the grounds.” It seemed an imperfect plan – what would we do if someone accidentally did something that brought the queens out before we were ready? – but no one had any better ideas. Keith joined Kat and Bobby – since they already had an idea of where to look, they agreed a third set of eyes and hands would be helpful – but Kipps and I declined extra help. It would just mean another person to worry about in those dark, narrow passageways, especially with two ghosts to watch out for, and besides, we already had an unofficial third partner in Skull. Instead, George would join Holly and Emma, the three of them patrolling the grounds closest to the passage entrances just in case. Of course, we had no way of knowing if Skull was in a helpful mood or not, but with how angry I’d been after his stunt in the chapel, I had a feeling he’d cooperate. I clipped a small spade to my belt while Kipps hefted a larger shovel over his shoulder, and after wishing the others good luck, we made for the passageways once more.

Now that we knew where we were going, it didn’t take nearly as long to reach the room where we’d seen the first prince. I didn’t dare touch the floor this time. I did, however, notice a potential problem.

“Kipps, what are we supposed to do if the Source is under the floor? This entire room is solid stone.” Kipps groaned.

“You’re right,” he said. “A shovel won’t cut through that, not quickly, anyway.” Parts of the floor had a slight tiled pattern to them, but even those could’ve been stone blocks several inches thick, and they looked very solid. They wouldn’t come up easily.

 _“Incoming,”_ Skull said. Just like before, our young Visitor burst through the floor. Knowing I didn’t have much time, I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out a pair of earplugs I’d nicked from George’s stash – he used them to block out the sound of his own snoring, but I hoped they might dampen the psychic screams a bit. Crossing my fingers, I shoved them in my ears.

They seemed to do the trick – the prince’s shrieks were still loud, of course, but not nearly as debilitating as they’d been the other night. Kipps immediately leapt forward and began weaving ward knots around him, leaving me free to see if we could get any more information from this room. Wasting no time, I dropped to my knees and pressed my palm to the floor.

The echoes were garbled and full of static, like a badly tuned radio. I didn’t really get anything at all in terms of recognizable speech. All I could really make out was a sort of scraping sound. Unfortunately, I thought I knew what it was. To test my theory, I took the spade from my belt and dragged it across the stone floor. Bingo.

_“Found something, eh? Do we have to do some digging after all?”_

“Is there a way for you to see if something’s buried in the floor?” I replied. “There’s no way we can get through this stone with just a shovel.” Grabbing a handful of salt from my belt, I added, “Kipps, duck!” I threw the salt at the Visitor, which shrieked as the granules hit it right in the face.

_“Ouch – that wasn’t very nice! As for the floor, perhaps. Though you know, a stick of dynamite would do the job nicely.”_

“Skull!” I cried. “We can’t just blow the place up! I don’t fancy killing anyone tonight if I don’t have to, thanks!”

 _“I’m already dead.”_ I glared at him before throwing another salt bomb.

“Well, _I’m_ not! And we don’t even know if there’s anything in here _to_ blow up!” Skull sighed his best _‘you’re no fun’_ sigh.

 _“Alright, keep your hair on. I’ll see what I can do.”_ He closed his eyes and concentrated.

 _“Hmm…something’s not quite right. Give me a minute.”_ And he disappeared, taking his Other-light with him. Kipps yelped at the sudden darkness, and I leapt forward to help him with the Visitor. Our eyes hadn’t even adjusted to the change when Skull was back, his greenish aura filling the room once more.

 _“Definitely something unusual about the floor in here,”_ he reported. _“Checked out the next room over just to be sure. It looks like someone tampered with the floor in here at some point, because the stone isn’t quite the same – and it definitely has bits of something else mixed in with it.”_

“Something else, like rocks, or something else, like…”

 _“Bone fragments. Loads of them.”_ I groaned.

“Kipps!” I called. “We’ve got a problem!” The prince was still putting up a fight, so I explained as best I could in between ward knots and salt bombs.

“Damn,” Kipps swore. “The fragments are buried in the floor? How are we supposed to get them out?”

 _“More like they_ are _the floor,”_ Skull corrected.

“Not the time, smart-arse!” I said.

“Huh?”

“Not you – him,” I clarified, jerking my thumb towards Skull, “and I don’t think we _can_ get them out.”

“Well, then what are we supposed to do?” Kipps ducked as the prince rushed him and parried with a series of quick slashes. Ectoplasm flew.

“Get out of the way.” I pulled my biggest silver net from my belt, shook it out like a blanket, and, hoping I was in the right spot, draped it across the floor. The prince and his shrieks vanished.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “It looks like the bones are the Source, but this is a shoddy solution at best – I got the spot where he first appeared, but the net isn’t big enough to cover the whole room, and I don’t know how far out the bone fragments go.”

_“They’re all over the place – sloppy craftsmanship, that is. Bet he wouldn’t have screamed so much if they’d done an interesting mosaic.”_

“Are you serious right now?”

 _“Of course. Mosaics are quite nice. Oh, that’s right – we’ve already established that you don’t appreciate nice things.”_ I threw up my hands in defeat.

“Skull…just shut up. Kipps, let’s go. We’ll need to tell the team what’s happened.” Kipps grabbed his shovel, and we hurried from the room.

Except we didn’t get back to the team, not right away – on our way back to the main staircase, we ran into the other prince.

“What the hell?” I cried in dismay.

“Are the princes not buried in the same place?” Kipps asked.

“I don’t know! That would be just our luck, wouldn’t it!” This prince shrieked just like his brother had done, and we lifted our swords and began the all-too-familiar dance. Ward knot, dodge, salt bomb, thrust. Rinse and repeat. Kipps hadn’t had time to drop the shovel, so he swung that around as well – it might’ve been the first time anyone had ever fought off a Visitor with a gardening tool.

 _“No bones in this floor,”_ Skull told me.

“Dammit. Alright, so you didn’t become a paving stone like your brother,” I shouted at the prince, slicing at it with my rapier yet again. “Where the hell are you buried, then?”

“Where did it vanish the last time you saw it, Lucy?” Kipps called. He swung the shovel again, the blade chopping right through the prince’s head.

“No idea! It was still there when I passed out, Flo blew it up on the…” I trailed off, my eyes wide.

“The stairs!” I cried. “The main stairs – we’d already made it out of the walkways by then!” I furiously slashed my blade through the ghost, slicing him clean in two. Ectoplasm flew everywhere, and I raced from the room, Kipps close behind.

“The first prince stayed in that one room, but the second one followed Flo and I all the way back to the stairs!” I shouted as we ran. “There has to be a reason for that!”

“You think his Source is in the stairs?”

“Have any better ideas?”

“No!”

We reached the staircase just a few minutes later, and Skull had good news.

 _“Just an ordinary staircase – there_ is _something buried at the bottom, though.”_ We all but tumbled down the steps in our haste, and we met even more good news at the bottom.

“Dirt!” The steps themselves were stone just like the rest of the passages, but as they led directly outside, they leveled off into grass and dirt. Kipps hefted his shovel and furiously began to dig. But the prince was back, and he wasn’t going to give up without a fight. I ripped a flare from my belt and threw it as hard as I could, Greek fire engulfing the prince as the canister shattered. The ghost screamed but didn’t disappear, and I braced myself before running halfway back up the stairs, rapier at the ready. After the horrors of Combe Carey Hall and the Little Tom case, I _really_ didn’t like fighting on stairs, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to keep the prince away from Kipps.

“Any luck?” I yelled. I thrust and parried as best I could in the narrow space, the prince’s continual shrieks echoing in my ears even through the earplugs.

“There’s something here!” Kipps shouted back. “A chest of some sort – but it’s stuck! Hey, Cubbins, get over here!” Evidently, George’s team was close by.

The ghost shrieked again, and my entire focus was soon on the battle. Thrust, parry, thrust, parry, salt bomb, ward knot, another ward knot…

“Hurry up!” I shouted. My arm felt like it was about to fall off, and my balance was still a bit iffy as well. A flare would’ve helped more than the salt bombs, but if I threw one in such close quarters, I’d set myself on fire along with the ghost. My eyes widened as the Visitor reared like a snake ready to strike. I threw up another ward knot, but just like the other night when I’d started to tire, I made a mistake, and this time, it was big enough that the ward didn’t hold at all. The ghost lunged, and I threw myself out of the way, landing painfully on my backside. My rapier clattered down the steps out of reach. The prince came around for a second attack, but before it could move, it vanished.

“Lucy!” A voice I recognized as Lockwood’s called up the stairs. “Lucy, are you alright?”

“Sort of – ugh.” I hauled myself to my feet. “I won’t be able to sit for a week.” I slowly descended the stairs, picking up my fallen rapier as I went. When I reached the bottom, I had to climb over a sizeable hole in the ground, next to which sat a trunk covered in a silver net. Gathered around it was the entire team – they must’ve heard the commotion and come over to investigate.

“Two more down,” Kipps said with a grin. “Good work, team.” He held up his hand for a high-five, which I returned with a laugh.

“Three, actually,” Kat Godwin corrected. She held up her own parcel. “We found Henry’s Source, too – a cudgel, just sitting there, calm as you please, amongst the rest of the stuff on display in the torture exhibit.”

“The top’s got dried blood all over it,” Bobby added, “which fits with the ghost we saw the other night – he’s got a massive head wound.”

“Smashing!” Lockwood declared. “Well done, everyone! Let’s get these off to DEPRAC and then break for some tea.”

“You sure you’re alright, Luce?” Lockwood asked as we returned from the DEPRAC vans and made for the iron circle on the lawn. “Kipps said it sounded like you took quite a fall on the stairs.”

“Just a bruised backside, is all. I’ll be alright to fight the queens.”

_“You could always just show them Cubbins’ backside – that’d scare them away.”_

“Since when have _you_ seen George’s backside?”

“Um…what?”

“What about my backside?”

The first question came from Lockwood; the second, George himself. I swore loudly, my face burning.

 _“Somebody_ thinks he’s being funny,” I bit out through clenched teeth, jerking a thumb towards my backpack.

 _“What I experienced in that tub was_ not _funny, thank you very much.”_

“JAR, Skull!”

_“Fine, fine. No need to be so testy.”_

“I really don’t know why I put up with you sometimes,” I muttered. “Now, Lockwood, about that tea…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I totally forgot about most of Skull's best lines in this chapter - don't mind me as I sit here giggling to myself while I edit...


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is a rollercoaster of a chapter - lions and tigers and bears, oh my...

Twenty minutes later, we were fed, watered, and ready to continue. We still didn’t know what the queens wanted us to find, but we had marked out all of those cold spots when we’d come back during the day. They were as good a starting point as any.

“Lucy, I want you with me now,” Lockwood said as we prepared to move out. “We can’t be too careful with these three.” I nodded in agreement. It was time to go in with everything we had. One last check of our belts and one last sip of tea later, we left the protective circle and got to work, fanning out in all directions across the grass.

“We’ll do one last sweep around the chapel first, just to be sure,” Lockwood said. As we expected, though, our search turned up nothing, and we soon returned to the lawn. We didn’t see any sign of the queens, either – I guess we weren’t in there long enough to disturb them – but we knew we’d see them soon enough. After all, we _were_ actively hunting their Source.

“Where to?” I asked as we stopped on the edge of Tower Green. To my left as well as straight ahead beyond the Green, I could see dark shapes and little pinpricks of light moving about, other members of our team immersed in their own searches. Lockwood scanned the grounds before donning his sunglasses.

“Straight ahead,” he told me. “The site of the queens’ executions seems a good place to look, doesn’t it?”

Tower Green itself wasn’t anything special, as far as I could tell – it looked very much like all the other grassy areas in the Tower complex. There was a small memorial in the center, a plaque on a stand proclaiming it the spot where the scaffold had stood and naming those who’d been executed there, but Lockwood wasn’t so sure.

“There aren’t any death glows at this spot,” he said. “The worst of those are about ten feet away, over there.” He pointed for my benefit.

“Maybe they’ve got the spot wrong?” I suggested. “It’s been hundreds of years.”

“It’s quite possible,” Lockwood agreed. “We can still take a look around here, but I’m not sure we’ll find anything.” We flicked on our torches and began to search.

Searching patches of grass gets very boring after a while. It’s even worse when it starts to rain. And start to rain it did, a light mist at first that quickly turned into a steadier stream of cold, wet drops. I shivered violently and sneezed; Lockwood turned up the collar of his coat and huddled inside it. Water dripped into my eyes as I crouched to examine yet another patch of grass, once more finding nothing.

“Lockwood, how on Earth are we ever going to find this Source?” I asked in frustration as he came to stand beside me once more. Lockwood sighed heavily.

“I really don’t know, Luce. I’m just as lost as you are.” He paused a moment, then said, “Do you feel up to checking out the death glows? You might be able to Hear something I can’t.” I shrugged.

“Might as well, I suppose,” I said. “Lead the way.”

The site of the death glows was just like every other unremarkable patch of grass we’d already searched, and when I tried to Listen, all I got was the pitter-patter of the rain – nothing supernatural at all.

“I’m going to try Touch,” I said. “I’m not Hearing anything at all – maybe I’ll get something that way.” Lockwood nodded.

“Alright. I’ll keep an eye out.” I nodded back, reassured. Touch left an agent very vulnerable, but I trusted Lockwood with my life – I knew he’d have my back. Wiping the excess rain off my face once more, I knelt and pressed my palm to the grass.

Just like when I’d tried to use my Touch in the outer walkways, I didn’t get much at first – radio static, and a few very faint sounds I couldn’t make out. Either the Tower wasn’t keen on giving up its memories, or they were just slow to come through because they were so old. After several seconds, though, the sounds became clearer: _swish…thump. Swish…thump._ The first sound was almost as familiar to me as my own voice – it was the same sound a rapier made as it cut through the air. With that in mind, it didn’t take me long to figure out what it meant in this context and what the thumping sound must be, and I wrenched myself back to the present, feeling sick.

“Alright, Luce?” Lockwood must’ve noticed how quickly I’d ripped my hand away from the ground.

“I think…I think I just heard echoes of the executions,” I said shakily. Lockwood reached out a hand to help me up. As soon as I was on my feet, he pulled me into a tight embrace.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know how much you hate that.” He wasn’t wrong. Hearing what a ghost had to say wasn’t exactly fun, but the echoes experienced through Touch could be downright brutal, and the particularly vivid ones always left me feeling shaky and weak, like I’d just overcome a bad bout of flu. I hugged Lockwood tightly once more before stepping back with a sigh.

“What are we going to do?” I asked quietly. “They’re the most vicious spirits here, we’ve got to find their Source!”

 _“Find them…”_ It was little more than a whisper, but it was there. My eyes widened in horror.

“Oh, no…”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“The queens,” I said. “I just heard the queens again.” Lockwood sucked in a sharp breath.

“Then we’d best hurry,” he said. “I don’t want to fight those three any longer than we have to.”

“Watch out!” another voice suddenly shouted. We turned and ducked just in time to see something spectral go sailing over our heads. It wasn’t one of the queens, though – for one thing, it still had its head, and for another, it had four legs and a tail.

“Lion!” George panted as he ran by, rapier in hand. Greek fire erupted at the lion’s feet courtesy of one of the girls – I was too far away to see who – and the lion roared angrily before leaping neatly over the obstacle. It turned to face my fellow agents, baring long, sharp teeth.

“That’s a new one,” I said faintly. The lion roared again and charged, scattering the agents who’d been fighting it. They’d soon disappeared out of sight. I could hear screaming coming from another part of the grounds, too, as well as what sounded like another roar. Was the lion just unbelievably fast, or was there more than one?

“Lucy, come here!” I turned to see Lockwood peering at something on the ground a few feet away from the death-glow spot.

“What’s this, then?” I stepped closer and crouched beside him to see what he’d found. It was a…rock of some sort, maybe? The rain, which was getting heavier, made it hard to see. I couldn’t tell what it was made of, either, only that it was less than a foot square and seemed to be embedded in the grass.

“That’s not part of the scaffold, is it?” I asked, looking shocked. “How did we miss this when we were here yesterday?”

“I don’t think so, and I don’t know,” Lockwood answered, but he sounded excited. “The scaffold wasn’t a permanent structure, was it? And I think it was made of wood. But we’re still basically standing right where it would have stood – this marker, or whatever it is, could be important.” He clapped his gloved hands together, his eyes glinting even in the darkness.

“We need a shovel – think you could go fetch one?”

“I’ve got a spade, actually,” I said, unfastening the tool from my belt and handing it to him. “Will that do?”

“Well enough to start, but we’ll want a bigger one, I think,” Lockwood said. “We’ll be able to dig faster that way – and with these three, we’ll need to be fast. Go grab us one, will you? They’re with the rest of the gear.”

“I shouldn’t leave you alone,” I said with a frown. “We’ve had far too many surprises on this case already.”

“Then we’ll go together.” Lockwood shoved the spade into the ground to mark the spot and stood, reaching out to grasp my hand in his own.

“Hurry up, then!” he said, and together, we raced across the grass.

Our plan to grab the shovel and hurry back to the Green didn’t exactly go well – of course, given our track record, we should’ve _expected_ that everything would shortly go to hell. As soon as we turned the corner past the White Tower, we ran straight into a war zone. Our friends were locked in fierce fights with not one, but _three_ animal spirits – the lion from earlier, a second lion, and some sort of bear. Lockwood and I were forced to separate as one of the lions sprinted towards us, Jen, Keith, and Kipps hot on its tail, and I nearly squeaked in fright when I saw the other lion leap several yards as easily as if he’d taken a step, Holly and Kat hastily throwing themselves out of its way. The bear couldn’t move as fast or as far as the lions, but it was enormous, nearing seven feet on its hind legs, if I had to guess, and its paws ended in wickedly sharp claws. It was roaring almost as loud as the lions, and it kept swinging those massive paws in deadly arcs, preventing the group trying to fight it from getting close enough to do any real damage. On top of all this, it was now raining harder than ever, so none of us could see clearly more than a few feet in any direction.

“Get the shovel, Luce!” I turned to see that Lockwood had gotten caught up in the fight with Holly and Kat’s lion, the beast leaping nimbly away from each of their rapier swings. It roared loudly when a salt bomb, courtesy of Kat, exploded across its nose. I hurried to the supply circle, slipping and sliding across the wet grass, stopping only long enough to grab the requested shovel before racing back out again.

“Lockwood, I’ve got it!” I shouted as I hurried by. Behind me, the bear roared, and I heard the hiss of ectoplasm as Holly finally scored a direct hit on their lion. Taking advantage, Lockwood smashed a magnesium flare at the lion’s feet, and it vanished in a rush of green flame. He was so close that a dozen little fires erupted across the front of his coat, though they sputtered out quickly in the driving rain. He paused only to push his sopping hair out of his eyes before running after me, and the two of us ran as quickly as we could back to Tower Green.

“I can still see the death glows!” Lockwood called over the noise of the rain and the ongoing battle behind us. We raced across the grass but skidded to a halt on the edge of the Green. Something – or rather, _three_ somethings – glowed in the entrance to the chapel. The queens had come out to play.

_“Where are they? Find them…”_

“Lockwood,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice even while still speaking loud enough that he could hear me over the rain. “How long, exactly, did we have before the queens attacked us last time?”

“Not long enough.” We drew our rapiers and waited, hardly daring to breathe. Slowly, cautiously, we took a step forward, then another.

 _“Where ARE they?”_ Another step.

_“WHERE ARE THEY?”_

A violent gust of wind exploded across the Green, knocking us off our feet and sending us skidding across the grass. For the second time that night, I felt my rapier leave my hand; seconds later, I felt a sharp pain as the wind forced me back again and I landed on the blade, slicing open my good hand right through my glove. Blood welled up in my palm and I cursed. Visitors were drawn to blood the way George was drawn to pudding. Securing the rapier in my belt, I rolled over and began to crawl across the grass, trying to keep myself as small as possible and not to hiss in pain each time I put down my wounded hand. I had no idea where Lockwood was or what he was doing, but one of us _had_ to get to that marker. Lockwood, as it transpired, had had the same idea, because we bumped into one another about halfway to where I thought we needed to go. He too was crouched low, and he was dragging the shovel behind him.

“You smell like burnt toast,” I greeted him, nodding toward his coat.

“Unfortunately, I might’ve ruined this one,” he agreed. “We’ll have to give it a proper send-off, if that’s the case. And you’re drifting a bit too far to the left, by the way.”

“Thanks.” We continued our search for the marker – the spade might’ve been blown away for all we knew – while above us, the queens’ rage continued, the wind howling and the rain pouring down harder than ever. The queens themselves were drifting ever closer – one of us was going to have to engage them soon, whether we wanted to or not.

_“FIND THEM!”_

“There!” Lockwood cried, pointing to a spot in the grass some five feet away. Sure enough, there was the marker, though as I’d suspected, the spade was long gone.

“You’re better with a blade, so let me dig,” I said. I left out the bit about how I wasn’t sure I could even hold my rapier at the moment, never mind use it. Hopefully, I’d be able to dig at least somewhat quickly. Lockwood passed me the shovel, and I discreetly wiped my bloody hand on my coat before wrapping it around the handle. It stung, but I was able to hold on, and I plunged the blade into the grass beside the marker.

I knew at once we were on the right track, because the queens absolutely _exploded,_ everything in the immediate area that wasn’t completely secure suddenly becoming a deadly projectile. I ducked as the lost spade sailed dangerously close to my head, and a massive crash rang out over the grounds as the rest of the chapel windows shattered, hundreds of jagged shards of glass joining the hurricane raging around us. Rain lashed at my face, wind howled, and the queens shrieked.

 _“FIND THEM!”_ The queen holding her head rushed forward, forcing Lockwood to leave my side and leap into action. I continued to dig as fast as I could, but it was hard to see through the rain, and my bloody hand kept slipping on the shovel handle.

_“WHERE ARE THEY?”_

“That’s what I’d bloody well like to know!” I snapped as I tossed aside another shovelful of dirt. I made to go in again but stopped when the blade hit something hard.

“Lockwood!” I shouted. “I think I’m getting somewhere!”

“Marvelous!” He shouted back. “Hurry it up, will you?” To my dismay, he was now battling _two_ angry queens, his swordplay much slower than usual in the torrential rain. He tried to use a magnesium flare instead, but it just fizzled out.

“Sooner would be better, Luce!”

“Working on it!” Abandoning the shovel, I dropped to my knees and started ripping out clumps of mud with my hands, ignoring the stinging cut on my palm. There was a sort of box buried underneath the stone marker, and I wriggled my fingers around it in all directions to loosen it from the earth.

“LUCY!”

I looked up just in time to roll out of the way of one of the headless queens. Moments later, Lockwood collapsed. Ghost-touch? The flying debris? I didn’t know. All I knew was that it had to be the queens’ fault. I let out a roar of rage and jumped to my feet. Ignoring the constant pain in my hand, I wrenched the box free, drew my rapier, and faced the queens, placing myself between them and Lockwood.

“Come at me, I dare you!” I hollered as loud as I could. The queens responded with a scream so loud I doubled up in pain, even with the earplugs from earlier still in place. Even so, I didn’t give up – I couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ give up. I struggled to a standing position once more, tears of pain streaming down my face, and raised my blade high. Lockwood had saved my life on cases more times than I could count, pulling me back from the well at Combe Carey Hall, destroying that awful Fetch underneath Aickmere’s, braving the Other Side, coming after me in the Battle of Fittes House…he’d fought for me, and now I would fight for him. Anthony Lockwood was _not_ going to die, not on my watch.

What happened next was all a bit of a blur. My blade swung through the air as fast as the storm would allow, slicing through bits of the queens and setting the grass to sizzling as ectoplasm hit. I threw salt bombs, iron filings, anything I could reach, all the while doing my best to keep the queens away from Lockwood’s motionless form. I knew at some point I had to seal the Source, but I couldn’t risk it when the queens were so close – they were already so angry that making any visible move towards the box with a silver net would likely get me killed on the spot. I couldn’t run for help, either – if I left Lockwood alone, the queens would kill _him_ for sure. And so, I fought. Even my adrenaline-fueled state couldn’t last forever, though, and I soon found myself tiring.

“No!” I cried. I threw up another ward knot and slipped in the mud, crashing to my knees. In one last desperate bid, I ripped a silver net from my belt, tossed it towards the box…and missed.

“Lucy, look out!” I turned to see the queens bearing down on me. Not stopping to find out who’d shouted, I swung my sword once more, the blade passing through all three queens. My ears rang as they screamed again, and my rapier slipped from my grasp, my injured hand unable to hold on any longer.

This was the end, then. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.

Except the end didn’t come. Seconds before the queens made contact, they vanished. The wind died down, and I threw myself over Lockwood’s body and covered my head just as the glass shards and other debris crashed to the ground around us. All that was left was the sound of the rain.

Someone had sealed the Source. Anxious to know who had just saved our lives, I struggled to lift my head. Kneeling by the box was a familiar large blond.

“George…” I whispered.

It was all I could manage before the pain became too much and I slumped into unconsciousness.


	12. Chapter 12

I opened my eyes to the unforgiving lighting of a hospital room. Wincing at the brightness, I took in the situation as best I could. My left hand was heavily encased in bandages; an IV line trailed from my right. My clothes were gone, replaced by one of those awful hospital gowns. My head ached, although not nearly as badly as I was expecting. Then I caught the murmur of voices.

“Why isn’t anything happening?”

“Shh, you’ll wake them!”

“Shouldn’t they be awake already? It’s been a-a-aaaaa-CHOO! Hours!”

“Well, now you’ve done it!”

It took me a few seconds to process the exchange, but my fuzzy brain gradually recognized Holly and George’s voices. A smile crept across my face at the concern lacing George’s tone. He wasn’t usually so open, and it kind of made me want to give him a hug. Instead, I settled for opening my eyes and turning over slightly so I could see my fellow agents. They sat in two identical, nondescript armchairs, their faces anxious. Holly was the first to see me watching them.

“Lucy, you’re awake!” she exclaimed. “Oh, my goodness, we were so worried…how do you feel?”

“Like I got run over by a truck,” I answered honestly. I struggled to sit up as best I could, but putting any sort of pressure on my hands was painful, so I didn’t get very far. Holly rushed to my side, helpfully propping me up with a few pillows.

“Thanks, Hol. What about you, are you alright? You don’t sound so hot, yourself.”

“Well, we spent hours in the pouring rain, didn’t we? The entire team’s got nasty colds.” As if to emphasize her point, George loudly blew his nose from behind her. Now that I thought about it, my headache did feel like congestion more than anything else. I didn’t mind all that much, actually – a stuffy nose wasn’t exactly fun, but it was a hell of a lot better than the Visitor-induced migraine I’d had before.

Now that I was in a better position, I could see that we were in a private room with just two beds – the first, of course, was mine, and the second held Lockwood, who was still asleep. An IV mirroring mine poked out from one slender hand, and a large white bandage covered most of his forehead. I couldn’t tell if he had any other injuries.

“He’s fine,” Holly said with a soft smile, her gaze following mine. “Had a nasty cut on his forehead, and he needed stitches where one of those glass shards ripped open his arm, but otherwise, he’s alright.”

“I could also do with a glass of water.” We both turned to see that Lockwood had woken and was watching us, looking amused.

“You are NOT allowed to scare us like that ever again,” Holly scolded as she helped Lockwood sit up and gave him the requested water. Now that he wasn’t fully tucked under the sheet, I could see a huge bandage wrapped around the entirety of his left bicep, presumably covering the aforementioned stitches. He sipped the water, sneezed violently, and huddled back under his blankets, shivering a bit. Looks like he’d gotten sick just like the rest of us.

“What exactly happened?” I asked.

“A bloody nightmare, that’s what,” George cut in. “We were supposed to help you fight the queens, but the animals came out of nowhere, and it took us ages to find their Sources – they were buried way out by the moat, and by the time we sealed them and got back inside the complex, all hell had broken loose.”

“I think all hell broke loose long before that, George,” Lockwood said dryly. George snorted, the sound abruptly cut short by a coughing fit. He blew his nose again.

“Shut it, you tosser. You know what I meant. Anyway, Jen sprained her ankle fighting one of the lions, so half the team stayed with her while the rest of us went back inside looking for you. We got all turned around because of the rain, and the wind was unbelievable. And all that glass flying around – I’m honestly surprised you two are still alive.”

“You and me both,” I said. “I lost track of how many times I thought I was going to die last night.”

“Two nights ago,” Holly corrected gently. “You’ve been out for quite a while.”

“Um…wow. Two nights ago, then.” I paused to let that sink in. This case had really knocked us out. “But what happened, George? I know you sealed the Source, but how?”

“I really don’t know,” he said honestly. “I lost track of the others in the rain, but somehow, I ended up on Tower Green, and I could see the queens, so I sort of knew where to go from there. I had to go slowly so I wouldn’t attract their attention, but I finally got close enough to see you as well, Lucy, going all warrior princess on the queens.”

“Warrior princess?” I repeated with amusement. “George, I think that’s the highest compliment you’ve ever given me.”

“I’m serious. You were just standing there, soaking wet, covered in mud and looking ready to drop dead, but you also looked ready to kill someone, and your sword work was something fierce. You could’ve walked right out of that comic I was reading last week.”

“George, I’m gonna cry.”

“Please don’t. Anyway, I could tell you were struggling, and I saw you throw a silver net behind you, but nothing happened. I figured the Source must be over that way, so that’s where I went. I think you can figure out the rest.”

“George…” In spite of his telling me not to, I really could feel tears welling in my eyes.

“Oh, Lucy…”

“George, you saved our lives,” Lockwood said. “I think she’s allowed to cry a little.” He sent a small smile my way, and I felt one of the tears slide down my cheek.

“Once the queens’ storm died down, the rest of us were able to find George and help get you out of there,” Holly continued. Her eyes also looked suspiciously watery. “My God, you were such a mess, though – Lockwood, we honestly thought you were dead. Lucy was covered in mud, you were _both_ covered in blood, not to mention all sorts of cuts and scrapes and…the DEPRAC team was horrified when they saw you, rushed you straight over here. You’ve been here ever since.”

“And the Tower?” Lockwood asked. “Is the Tower clear?” George snorted again.

“Lockwood to a T – nearly dies, and the first thing he asks is if the case is closed. Yes, the Visitors are all gone – we won’t be going back there anytime soon, unless we have a sudden desire to take a field trip. Not sure we’d be welcome there anyway – the chaplains aren’t too pleased with the state of the place.”

“Hey, the queens started it,” Lockwood protested. “That’s all on them.” I burst out laughing.

“That’s nearly the exact same thought I had when we first set the chapel’s chairs on fire,” I said once I’d stopped. “And speaking of the queens – what were the other Sources, anyway?”

“Well, as it turns out, this case was all about the heads,” George said. “That’s what was in that box you dug up – two human skulls. Seems like Anne Boleyn was the only one whose head was buried with her body, and she wasn’t too pleased that her fellow queens hadn’t been given the same courtesy. I have no idea why the other two heads were under the scaffold, or how they ended up buried together in the first place – there were several years between their executions, you know – but there you have it. We found the lions’ skulls, too, plus an old bit of chain that we think was used on the bear.”

“All about the heads, indeed.” Skull would approve – I’d have to tell him when we got home.

“When are we going home?” Lockwood asked then as if he’d read my thoughts. “I’m bored of this place.”

“Lockwood, you’ve been awake for all of twenty minutes!” George admonished him.

“But you said we’ve _been_ here for almost two days!” Lockwood complained. “That’s _more_ than enough – c’mon, Luce, back me up on this one.”

“It would be nice to go home,” I agreed.

“Atta girl! Be a dear, George, and call the nurse? I’m starving, and I _refuse_ to eat the rubbish this place calls food.”

* * *

The next evening found Holly, George, Lockwood and I lounging in the sitting room of 35 Portland Row, enjoying mugs of steaming cocoa and a plate of biscuits, Holly and George in the armchairs while Lockwood and I sat side by side on the sofa.

“Another commendation from DEPRAC!” Lockwood said with a grin. “You know, I think Barnes is starting to like us!”

“Is that what that was?” I asked, my eyes dancing with mischief and a smile playing across my lips. “Seemed his usual _‘Why-do-I-put-up-with-you?’_ self to me.” Lockwood laughed.

“Dear old Barnes – may he never change.”

“What about when Kipps hugged you?” Holly asked me. “That’s something I never thought I’d see!”

“He did, didn’t he?” I said with a laugh. “Said I’d done a bang-up job on the case, too, and that he’d see us around! Kat Godwin looked like she’d swallowed a lemon!” Our entire team had attended a debriefing meeting with Barnes earlier that day to finalize everything and officially close our case. Lockwood had shaken everyone’s hands as they left the debriefing, and Kipps had not only accepted the handshake, he’d clapped Lockwood on the shoulder and hugged me like we were old friends. In a strange sort of way, I guess we were. Kat, it seems, still viewed this as the ultimate crime, but the rest of the team had cheerfully said goodbye, Jen a bit wobbly on her crutches and everyone looking a bit worse for the wear with all their scrapes and bruises and bandages, but ultimately in good spirits.

“It _was_ a job well done, though,” George pointed out. “And has any agency ever tackled a case involving _seven_ Sources before?” I mentally counted, somewhat confused.

“Seven? I’m only getting six.”

“Two spots for the princes, plus the Changer, Henry’s cudgel, the queens, the lions’ skulls, and the bear’s chain,” George said. “We found those last ones together, but I count them as separate Sources because it sounds cooler.” Holly giggled.

“It _is_ pretty impressive, isn’t it?” she agreed. “And it doesn’t sound like anyone will be topping that anytime soon.” Barnes had discussed the other sites in progress at the debriefing, and it sounded like his initial suspicion that the Tower of London would be one of the toughest sites to clear was correct. Westminster Abbey had been completely cleared in less than two hours, the ghosts there all sleeping peacefully and happy to move on, and a few other sites had proven equally routine. The only other team that had so far had some trouble was the one clearing Tower Bridge – apparently, finding the Sources for those who’d jumped was proving difficult, and they still hadn’t finished. A few other teams hadn’t started clearing their sites yet. As for those teams assigned to continue with individual hauntings, Barnes reported that they’d often only had one case a night each as more and more Visitors passed on for good.

“To Lockwood and Co.!” I cheered, raising my mug in a toast. “The best agency in London!” Lockwood, Holly, and George raised their mugs in turn, a marshmallow escaping from George’s mug and falling onto the floor.

“To Lockwood and Co.!”

We drank deeply, and I beamed as I surveyed the happy scene and reached for another biscuit. George was now busily retrieving his lost marshmallow (I didn’t watch long enough to find out what he’d do with it once he found it), Holly was excitedly recounting her defeat of the lion, and Lockwood, if the look on his face was anything to go by, was already dreaming of our next adventure. I bit into my biscuit and smiled contentedly. Wherever those adventures took us, I knew I wouldn’t trade them for anything else in the world.

Hours later, after Holly had gone home and George had headed upstairs to bed, Lockwood and I remained on the sofa. We’d changed into pajamas, our slipper-clad feet resting on the coffee table and Lockwood’s good arm draped over my shoulder. It would be a while yet before we were fully healed, but we were making progress – I’d fully recovered from the ghost-touch incident, and the nurses had removed the bandage on Lockwood’s head before we’d left the hospital. All that remained was a thin scar near his hairline, just another chapter in his story as an agent.

“We did it again, Luce,” Lockwood said. I smiled.

“We did. We’ll have to gather everyone’s stories for the casebook so we can do it justice. I’ll even interview Skull.” Lockwood snorted.

“Will his portion be fit to print?” he asked. I snickered.

“Probably not, but I’m sure he’s not the only one who’ll have some rather colorful things to say about this one. He just has a…more creative vocabulary.”

 _“Don’t lie, you know my part will be the best. I’ve even got a title for the case for you – ‘We Three Queens’.”_ I raised my eyebrows and glanced up at the ceiling.

“I thought you were disgusted at the idea of, and I quote, ‘watching you two moon over each other all night’?” I said. “You’re not even in the room!”

 _“Oh, of course I am – and of course I’m not. I’m safely tucked upstairs, patiently awaiting your return…that is,_ if _you return.”_ I could practically _feel_ the shudder in his voice. _“I just couldn’t pass up the chance to make you say something embarrassing again.”_

“Again, _why_ do I put up with you?” I asked. Beside me, I could feel Lockwood shaking with suppressed laughter – I elbowed him in the ribs and stuck out my tongue.

“Sometimes I’m not sure why I put up with _you,_ either,” I said. He only laughed harder before pulling me close once more, entwining our fingers together. For several minutes, all was quiet, the two of us content to sit and listen to the crackling of the fire.

“Do you ever wonder what happens next?” I asked after a while. Lockwood shrugged.

“Sometimes. I don’t worry about it liked I used to, though. Someone’s gone and changed my priorities a bit.” He squeezed my hand, and I smiled softly. The sapphire around my neck sparkled lowly in the firelight.

“Visitors are finally moving on like they should, but we know the Problem won’t go away overnight,” Lockwood continued after a moment. “You can’t undo fifty years’ worth of mess in just a few months, and even when the Visitors themselves are gone, there will still be plenty of work to do. George will be in heaven when the intensive research stage rolls out. And the company is secure – no matter what comes next, we’ll be right in the middle of it, I’m sure.”

“I suppose that’s just another adventure,” I mused. “One that we’ll take on together, just like we’ve always done.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 _“Ugh. Even when I’m not in the room, you two make me want to vomit.”_ Skull materialized in his favorite armchair, wearing his best disgusted expression.

 _“Did you forget that a certain someone might not be around for much longer?”_ he asked with a pout. _“All this talk of Visitors leaving with complete disregard for my feelings is downright insensitive.”_

“He’s upset we’re talking about Visitors leaving where we can hear him,” I explained for Lockwood’s benefit. To Skull, I added, “I’m not all that worried about you, actually. You’re a Type Three, for one, so you’re already exceptionally strong, and you’re stubborn as hell. Unless you’ve got something suddenly calling to you, I have a feeling you’re going to stick around for a while.” Skull grinned.

 _“Fair point. After all, who else would make fun of you if I left? This one”_ – he nodded at Lockwood – _“seems to actually_ like _you for some weird reason, and Cubbins isn’t nearly creative enough. And finding someone new to tease wouldn’t be nearly so much fun – I’d have to learn all about them first, and that’s just boring. And everyone would be able to hear me! How…normal.”_ He shuddered dramatically.

“Perish the thought,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Can you imagine being normal, Lockwood?” Lockwood shook his head.

“Not in the slightest.”

_“Ah, he speaks sense for once! There’s hope for him yet. Yes, I think it’d be much more fun to drive you mad for the rest of your life, and then we can all cross over together. It’ll be a jolly good time.”_

“Seventy-odd years of putting up with your attitude,” I said, “especially when I’m old and gray and need those wonky-looking goggles to See you and can’t Hear you at all. And I’m sure you’ll bother me for eternity when I’m dead, too. Yes, that sounds _marvelous.”_ I then added, “And I’m nixing the title idea – you are _not_ allowed to taint a Christmas carol like that.”

 _“Ugh,_ now _you try to act like you appreciate music? You’re such a hypocrite. And seventy years, eh? That’s a bit ambitious, given your profession.”_

“I am an agent, yes,” I agreed. “I know we don’t really have the best track record. But Lockwood and Co. have never exactly played by the rules, have we?”

“Certainly not!” Lockwood agreed, sounding disgusted at the very idea. “Why ever would we do such a thing?” He looked at me. “In fact, Luce, I wouldn’t be surprised if you broke all the rules and never lost your Talent at all.”

“Are you subjecting me to seventy more years of actually _hearing_ Skull’s commentary?” I asked, aghast. “Anthony Lockwood, whose side are you on, anyway?”

“Yours, of course. I’m merely saying that you’re extraordinary, Lucy Carlyle.”

 _“Nice save – although he would’ve gotten more points for saying he was on_ my _side, of course.”_ And so it went.

It was a bizarre situation even by an agent’s standards – two agents and a ghost in the same room without any sort of protective barriers, no desire from either party to take down the other, and all three bickering and laughing and joking like nothing less than old friends. It was a bizarre situation indeed – but like I’d said, Lockwood and Co. have never exactly played by the rules. For us, this was exactly the way it should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you all so much for reading and for your kind comments - I had lots of fun with this one! Hopefully I'll be back with more from this crew soon. :)


End file.
